tech

There are 188 posts filed in tech (this is page 19 of 19).

OnLive Desktop

I was one of the first to check out the OnLive Desktop app for the iPad that techies all over USA are just discovering.

I am not truly impressed. I’ve been using TeamViewer’s excellent free apps to remote desktop into my home computer since a long time and it provides a host of services to the free user. OnLive, on the other hand, has a good amount of expertise in the remote desktop/Virtual Machine sector, but not in the features section. Continue reading →

Sharing Apps bring no joy!

I have joined Pinterest. I have also joined Cheers, Instagram, Bufferapp and a whole bunch of other ways to share ‘stuff’. I’m so bogged down with all this sharing that it brought me to think, why all this sharing?

The Internet is a vast resource and it’s been there so long that it has become the lifeline for a lot of people around the world. Thus, it becomes a bit strange that there are so few content creators online and so many content-sharers. Sharing apps such as Pinterest only increase this trend, urging people to simply re-share things they see on the Internet to others, almost as though they were the first to create or discover that nugget of information.

But that in itself doesn’t serve any purpose. Surfing the Internet is easy enough that someone looking for a specific information will find it with a little bit of searching themselves. Thus, the concept of others sharing things your way doesn’t do much for those looking for original content.

Let me give you an example. I read a lot of RSS. I follow blogs all over the spectrum and they all aggregate into my Google Reader. Anyone interested in the list can go here. But since I follow all these blogs, I don’t really need to follow sites like Lifehacker and NetworkWorld on Facebook and Twitter and I don’t need people sharing things from these sites to me. It just beats the purpose of having a social network where I interact with real people instead of bots.

Coming back to Pinterest, I like their iOS app for it’s looks and usability. But I don’t like their idea of a browser bookmarklet or the miriad of ‘Pin it’ apps in the Google Chrome Store. Why would I share something already on the Internet? People looking for those things will definitely find them.

Bufferapp is great if I want to share things from the blogs I read to my friends, but why would I want to buffer a retweet? (Bufferapp is still evolving, they’re trying to focus more on corporate than individuals, or so I think!)

Instagram seems to be the most ‘original post’ friendly app where people post what they see around them, but it all then comes down to sharing those pics around to your social networks. Similar behavior by Chee.rs

I’m not sure what this trend is leading to. There should be a lot many more apps to quickly publish videos to Youtube or post tips to Lifehacker instead of just sharing things already existing on the Internet or elsewhere.

What do you say?

Consoling a network device from a Mac’s Terminal app

Hello All,

Ever since my blog went down, one of my best posts, this one to be precise, is unavailable. This is an upgraded and a more complete version of the same.

The method of consoling into a network device (router/switch/firewall/Load Balancer) from Windows is pretty well explained. Download PuTTY, connect a serial cable and you’re good to go. But how to do the same in Mac? Well, Mac’s Terminal.app has inbuilt ssh and serial abilities. You just need to extend it with a small plugin. The plugin for your device can be downloaded from this website or, for the lazy and impatient, from here.

Please note that this tutorial works for Mac, Linux as well as the Windows command line, you just need the right drivers from the website. You will also need this –

This is an RS232 to USB adapter that you can find on Amazon or at the Telecom Lab at CU Boulder.

After you’re done installing the drivers, connect the cable and fire up the Terminal app.

Then, run the following command –

ls /dev/tty.*

This will give you a list of all the ports that you can console with. (Observe the keyword tty, it’s the basis for the name PuTTY).

The port you’re looking for will look like – tty.usbserial-A4008Ywd (the name could vary)

After you know this port, run the following command –

screen /dev/tty.usbserial-A4008Ywd 9600

(replace the tty… with your port name)

Screen is the inbuilt program used to console into devices from terminal. 9600 is the baud rate of the device and is also often configured differently for each device in PuTTY.

Once you see Screen running, you’re in! You can now see the exact same result you see using PuTTY.

Update –

Screen has it’s own quirks that you must remember –

1. To exit the program, press Ctrl+a and then Ctrl+d to get back to terminal

2. Often, you need to use a break sequence when booting up a device in order to get into password recovery mode. The sequence for Screen is – Ctrl+a and then Ctrl+b Ctrl+b Ctrl+b (note that after pressing Ctrl+a, you will need to press Ctrl+b about 3 times to go into recovery mode.) Thanks to EtherealMind for this tip.

That’s all folks! You now have the freedom to console into network devices using your Mac!

Thoughts on OS X Mountain Lion

So, a preview to OS X Mountain Lion is out. Most people will not find out before evening because Apple decided to do a quiet launch on their website about it. But anyways, now that we know about it, what’s so great?

Let’s see. Apple decided to take the best features of the iOS ecosystem and push them towards OS X. Notice also, that the name is no longer Mac OS X, but simply OS X.

We will have, Game Center, Notifications Center, more iCloud integration, a ‘Messages’ app corresponding to the iMessages in iOS (also, a replacement for iChat) and many apps like Notes and Reminders that will sync with your iDevices to keep you seamlessly synced where ever you go. All of this will be possible because of iCloud.

Users will also have better Twitter integration and sharing options for websites like Vimeo and Flickr. That cute tweet poster in iOS 5 is also there. Apple is trying to woo people to Safari with the Sharing options, though how useful it turns out to be is yet to be seen. The notification center looks neat, although long time users of Growl will, well, growl.

Interesting new features are GateKeeper and Airplay mirroring. GateKeeper is like the User Account Control (UAC) of Windows, for the Mac. It’s going to be intrusive, troublesome and restrictive. What it does is, allows a person to make settings to block apps that are not from the Mac App Store or from the App Store but not from famous developers to not be installed on your system at all. If the default setting in the Mountain Lion is going to be ‘Mac App Store only’, it’ll not only cause problems to people who are new to the Mac but also shows Apple’s huge push towards the App Store instead of independent developers. The little guys with direct downloads from their websites will bear the brunt.

Airplay mirroring, on the other hand, is an awesome feature that allows you to wirelessly display your Mac’s screen on your appleTV connected TV.

Finally, the Game Center is going to be useful for playing games with your friends who own other Apple devices like iOS or another Mac. Like Apple says on their website, it’s now going to be the Mac vs the iPad vs the iPhone vs the iPod Touch. Fun indeed, if only we could buy a single app for all devices instead of having to pay for the Mac games separately.

On a more developer related note, Apple has been moving farther away from open source apps every upgrade. That means more proprietary software in Mac and less room for hacking. It remains to be seen how far they’ve gone this time and how the developers and lovers of Unix will be affected.

Lastly, those who want to, can download the Messages app for OS X right now from their website – http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-lion/messages-beta/

This offer is similar to when Apple released FaceTime for free initally and then started charging for it once it became popular. So grab your copy now!

Why Google+ will fail

I hate to be a harbinger of bad tides, but here are a few reasons why google+ will fail. I don’t write much nowadays so I’ll keep it short –

  1. Too much to do
    All websites ever successful started with just an idea. Google’s humble beginning was a page with a search box and a button. Twitter started with just one stream of tweets pouring in. Facebook started out as a place where you yourself share your profiles and likes and dislikes. So, when a mash-up of ideas comes along, people not only compare it to all other services, but also feel confused at what’s happening. I still remember introducing Facebook to my brother Nipun and he telling me that it’s darn confusing to use. Yesterday when I gave him a tour of Google+ the first thing he pointed out was that it’s just twitter on google! I tried to explain that there are other features too like group video chat etc but he just pointed me to an article about facebook teaming up with skype (he’s not tech-unsavvy, just waits for me to give him the latest news). Granted, facebook will probably flounder with video chat just like they do with everything else, but considering how people are well settled into facebook and google plus will still remain in beta (oops, they call it field testing!!!) for a long time to come, facebook can quickly gain lost ground since people know skype’s the best!!!
  2. Too much integration
    It seems that ever since I’ve gained access to google plus (5 of my friends added me to circles and I was in), Google+ is everywhere. From my google reader page, to my iOS mobile gmail login and from my emails ( I got a flood of google+ notifications) to my custom mail client ( I use mailplane for Mac, so shoot me!!). Google wants google+ to be everywhere I go. I don’t want that. I want to be able to shut it down and get rid of it when I want. I can do that with facebook, with twitter and I even did it long ago with good old orkut ( yes I too was on that boat once). But can I do it with google+? No. Bad idea. It has become so pervasive that I opened my google account settings and there it was, a dedicated google+ settings page. All this integration now seems to drive me away from google et al. I don’t wanna do that!!!
  3. Change is everywhere.
    Mashable says that in the google+ wave, google has plans of renaming picasa and blogger to google photos and google blogs ( thank god they didn’t touch YouTube!). When you login to gmail, the top right has a link to show you gmail’s new look. One of my apps recently updated itself since they say google has changed the way gmail’s handling of third party apps has changed. Ok, there’s change everywhere. But so much so fast? Google is but one entity to me. It gives me mail, search, blogs and images. But it’s just one entity. Even if all the above changes are not due to one single team, this is definitely a classic case of left arm not knowing that the right arm is updating the code. My whole plethora of google offerings is changing
    Within the next month or so and not all of it will be good. Most importantly, from a PR standpoint it’ll all be blamed to google+ since that’s the major new thing that google came up with. And with the integration that I pointed out above, google+ just doesn’t feel right.

I like Google. They make great products. But in an effort to gain whatever market they’ve lost to facebook and twitter and skype, they just made a mashup that even mashable would not approve of!!! It remains to see if I’m right.

Awesome iPhone Game Now on Java!

My favorite iPhone game, the brilliant Doodle Jump, an addictive and amazingly engrossing game is now available for all you Java-based mobile gamers out there! Yes, I’m talking to you, you Sony Ericsson and few-Nokia-models owners(not to mention HTC, Spice etc), who hoped at some time to own a piece of the iPhone Lifestyle one day. You’ve got some awesome stuff headed your way…

Doodle Jump Game

http://gallery.mobile9.com/f/1357032/

Get to this site and download this game for your Java phone and install it

(Simple instructions for Sony Ericsson phones – Use Bluetooth on your Laptops or use My Phone Explorer to put the game which is a .jar file into your phones and access it from there to install)

and after you’ve installed this super-awesome game, you’ll forget everything else for sure!!!

This concludes my tutorial of how to get one of the Best iPhone games on your Java phone

p.s. the view that “Doodle Jump” is one the Best games for the iPhone is held by the author and you can’t do much to change it 🙂 🙂 🙂

The Three Blind Men

Recently, I was in a shopping mall heading towards McDonald’s for a dinner. As I walked past a showroom, I noticed an odd occurrence. Three Men, holding each other by the arms were walking in a straight line. One look and I had dismissed this sight. But then I paused and looked at them again. Here were the three blind men, white sticks in hand, goggles covering their eyes at 9 in the night, walking steadily in the middle of the mall.

I went over to them and inquired as to where they were headed. They said they wanted to go to the loo and the lead amongst them confirmed from me that it was in  the direction ahead. I corrected him by saying in a matter of fact way that he would have to turn to the right after walking down a bit further. He thanked me and started heading out in the initial direction. Instantly, it occurred to me that in the most insensitive way, I had told them the directions but not the distances. I latched on to the first one and took them to the corner where they had to turn right and pointed them on to start walking in the said direction. Again, they thanked me and started off.  Satisfied that I had done a good job, I walked off but stopped before having gone more than a few steps. I cussed at myself for being that stupid and ran back to them in order to guide them further to the exact door. When I reached, they were fumbling around a fire escape, looking for the correct door. Many onlookers were passing by them, surprised to see them try to find their way in the maze of objects and paths we “sighted” people take for granted. Before I could reach though, another fellow had arrived and helped them get to the restroom. I realized as I looked from a distance that it was the lead who alone had to go to the loo but the other two had no option than to follow him. They stopped at the door and waited for him to return.

As I walked off, a thought came to my mind. As the world around us progresses and technology allows us to become greater than ourselves, the society we live in does not change, the plight of the people does not change and the conditions which affect us do not change. We may be running after cures for cancer and aging but the blind man still cannot see and the deaf can still not hear. There is technology to enable them in doing these too, but that technology is not available to the present at a price which does not hit the pride of the man bearing the cost. Those blind men were not in rags but seemed suitably dressed. A poor blind man would have been stopped at the doors of the mall and forced to look for a loo elsewhere but the guard let them in and guided their path too, in his own insensitive way. That goes to say that the latest gadgets which help the blind(no euphemisms here, say it as it is) are within their reach but not there yet.

As a tech enthusiast and a software programmer, I can say that anything is possible in the world of technology. As a hardware designer and a practical man, I can say that we are not looking at the right ventures. I can blame many for not following up on this, from Steve Jobs to the Indian Government, but till some brilliant yet cheap technology comes into the possession of these disabled people, let’s make sure that the three blind men you see on the road next time reach home safely. Let us make sure that the stark contrast between consumerism of the most blatant kind and the simple reality that life has not yet changed despite Science’s greatest contributions be diminished by Humanism, for that too is as simple as extending your hand and guiding the path of those who cannot see.