Watching live TV on Android

Lots and lots of applications are being added to Android market everyday and the market is growing rapidly. The count of apps on market has just crossed 100,000 and more than a billion downloads. You can find application for doing anything and everything with your smart phone. Here is the list of cool apps which will help you watch live TV on Android:

 

• Apalya TV. This application is built by a Hyderabad based startup “Apalya Technologies”. Apalya’s Mobile Video Delivery Platform seamlessly streams video content to Consumers, integrating Mobile Operators, Content owners and Mobile advertisers. The app brings most of the regional channels in India to your smart phone. Channels supported: IPL, Zoom, SVBC, Raj TV, Time TV, Makkal TV, E TV, etc. The audio and video quality are quite good if you have a descent internet connection. Download the app from Android market.
• SPB TV.This application is built by SPB Software which is long known for building Windows mobile applications. SPB TV offers 100+ international channels. The application costs $9.95 from the Android market. There is a free version of the same “SPB TV Lite” with limited channels.
• Sky+. This application is for the users from UK. It is not really a live TV app but will allow people with Sky+ and Sky+ HD boxes to record their channels on the move.

-- Varun

‘Quick Settings’ for Android

The word simple proves to be powerful yet again. Though Android has a nice consolidated Settings menu, you have to take the pain of going through the entire menu even for some of the frequently used ones. Here is an awesome application “Quick Settings” which will help you in changing the settings really quickly and from a single place. It is a nice all-in-one application. Simple but a very useful one.

Some of the interesting features of the application:

• Quick access to brightness, volume control, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, APN settings, etc.
• Battery meter and the phone memory usage indicator.
• LED Flashlight. You can use your camera LED as flashlight. This was earlier available only on rooted devices. This application brings the feature to non-rooted devices as well.

Try it out yourself. I am sure you will be amazed with this. Thanks to @psam for the tip.

-- Varun

Journey towards good heart health

Apollo Hospitals in association with The Times of India are organizing the Billion Hearts Beating campaign to fight the heart diseases in India. I have just started the journey towards good heart health. I took the following pledges yesterday:

• I took the pledge to get enough sleep.
• I took the pledge to eat more fruits and vegetables.
• I took the pledge to give up fried foods.
• I took the pledge to keep my weight under control.

What does it mean to take the pledge?

Taking the pledge is easy, but practicing what you have pledged requires lots of personal discipline. But, these pledges mean a lot to someone in need. For every pledge taken, one poor person will get a free heart screening. What a great cause and idea. Take the pledge now.

Prevention is not just better than cure. It’s easier, cheaper and smarter. Now stay healthy and let India win!

-- Varun

ISB iDiya – A National Social Ideas Challenge

What is ISB iDiya?
ISB iDiya is a social ideas competition with the aim to create high-impact, economically feasible and sustainable social enterprises in India. iDiya was launched by the Net Impact Club of ISB last year (2009). The purpose of the competition is to provide a platform for pursuing social entrepreneurship as a career path. What differentiates ISB iDiya from other competitions is that iDiya is focused at young professionals and the winners will receive extensive mentoring from various venture funds, to ensure that the idea gets implemented.

Who can participate?
The challenge is aimed at working professionals in India, across private, public or non-profit sectors. Teams of minimum two and maximum four individuals can participate. If you have enrolled in an educational institution pursuing a full-time program, you will not be able to participate in this.

What does your idea get you?
Apart from giving you a platform to showcase your idea, participating in the ISB iDiya Challenge will also help you identify possible avenues for ensuring your vision takes shape. Other benefits of participating include:

• A one week Boot Camp for the top six teams where you will meet industry leaders, venture capitalists and mentors.
• Top six teams will receive 10-weeks mentoring support after the competition. The mentoring board comprises of high-profile businessmen and organizations who will help you commercialize your idea.
• Top 20 ideas will be showcased on the iDiya website.
• Cash rewards

More details about the challenge can be found here.

-- Varun

[How to] Get a Google Nexus One

Ever since I have posted my review of Google Nexus One, lots of people have been asking me how and where to get one. And, based on my review, at least 8 of my friends have bought this killer device in the last few months. With Google having shutdown its web store, tech enthusiasts are trying hard to get the device from the Internet giant.

Here is a set of options for  you to own one:

• The Nexus One is available for purchase directly from Vodafone in these listed countries: Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK. You will have to buy it along with the Vodafone contract.
• The next option is exclusively for the registered Android developers. Though Google has stopped selling the phone online, it will continue to sell the phone for the developers through its partner. Registration for a developer costs $25. If you are ready to pay extra money for the smart phone, you can go for this. Register here. This option is not yet live. Shall update once it goes live. Update: Nexus One is officially the developer phone now and the unlocked phone is available for all the registered developers.
• Get it from gray market. :-)
• Google is expected to get into partnership with more retailers depending on the demand.

-- Varun

What’s new on Apple Store?

Apple has announced lots of cool stuffs today. Here is the list:

iMac. The ultimate all-in-one desktop computer.

Mac Pro. The fastest Mac ever with 12 cores of processing power.

 

New Mac Mini. Mac Mini with improved performance and with Snow Leopard Server.

Magic Trackpad. Multi-touch trackpad for the Mac desktop computer.

Battery Charger. Energy efficient battery charger for Magical trackpad, mouse, etc.

-- Varun

This week on Twitter [July 25, 2010]

Science & Technology

• OpenStack. Open source cloud computing software. Link.
• Nokia Siemens acquires Motorola wireless unit for 1.2Bn USD. Link.
• Deploy your own satellite for $8000. Link.
• Regular expression for finding prime numbers. Link.
• Windows 7 keyboard shortcut. Link.
• What the hack? Link.
• Yahoo! Open hack day Banagalore 2010 was a grand success with 430 hackers and 110 info geeks.
• Intel Capital invests in cloud-based game streaming service Gaiki. Link.
• Piezoelectric batteries. Link.

Social Media

• Yahoo! Pulse available for everyone. Link.
• Facebook officially crosses 500 million users. Link.
• Apple’s real problem with the white iPhone4. Link.

Google

• Google introduces user policy management for Google Apps. Link.
• Google re-designs its image search interface. Link.
• Screen capture extension for Google Chrome. Link.
• Google Chrome tells you when sites are down for other users. Link.

Gadgets

• Apple iPhone 4 coming to India in October. Link.
• Swype Input interface sneaks into Windows 7 demo. Link.
• Google Nexus One sold out. Link.
• 58.8% of Android handsets run a recent OS version. Link.

India

• How to use the Indian Rupee symbol on websites? Link.

-- Varun

[How to] Use the new Indian Rupee symbol on websites

Last week, you would have read about the new symbol for Indian Rupee (R - This is not an image). The next question anyone would have had asked is how do I type the new symbol. When will the symbol be added to the Unicode character set. India is part of the committee approving characters to Unicode char-set. It is expected that the new symbol will be approved in the next meeting of the committee to be held in October 2010. However, there are fonts available with the new symbol which you can download and use. If you want to use the new Indian Rupee symbol on your website, follow these instructions from @nparashuram:

•  Include the style sheet. <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://axemclion.github.com/rupee/rupee.css"/>The required font is embedded into the CSS.
• Then, add the following code at places where you would like the R to show up. <span style ="font-family:rupee">R</span>

Check out the bookmarklet and the GreaseMonkeyScript for doing the same here.

Source: Dy-Verse




-- Varun

YouTube HTML vulnerability!

Last week there was an attack on YouTube and I know that it was due to some HTML vulnerabilities on the site. But, I didn't get the chance to go through the complete details. Here is an insight into the actual attack. 

The attack is a very simple one. It is just an exploitation of XSS vulnerability on the site - Improper HTML / JavaScript sanitation. Users can add comments to any video on YouTube and someone had added <script> followed by some JavaScript code. Though the YouTube staffs are cleaning up the <script> tag, the code following the <script> tag had been missed out. So, whenever user adds a comment with some JavaScript code embedded inside a <script> tag, only the tag will be removed and not the actual code. Also, only the first <script> tag was cleaned up. Soon after this news broke out, bad guys on the web added crazy comments to some of the popular videos. Google had acted immediately to fix this and removed all the comments with JavaScript code. It is a simple attack but could do a lot of damage. Be careful when you are developing your web applications.

How can I secure my site? 

To secure your site, you must learn about the different web application exploits and try them out on a virtual environment. Here are two awesome projects to help you learn about web security defenses - 1. Web goat project. 2. Google labs Gruyere

-- Varun

[Learning by doing] Google Data API

The second post on the 'Learning by doing' series is about Google Data API. Google enables the developer community to extend the Google's services by exposing API for almost all of the services offered. Every service offered by Google has its own set of client libraries available in different languages including Java, .Net, Python, Javascript, etc. Some of the things like handshaking of user's credentials, accessing the user's contacts, etc will be the same across these services. The APIs are very simple yet powerful. If one develops an application using any one of these services, he / she will be able to build application easily using the other services as well.

Application to be built: Poor man's Blackberry - an application which will notify you of your meetings via SMS.

How do I start?

• Google calendar can send notifications to your mobile phones as an SMS. Connect your mobile phone to your Google account. Check our this to connect your phone.
• Sync your work calendar and Google calendar. Google has a tool called "Google Calendar Sync" for syncing Microsoft Outlook calendar and Google calendar. This tool can sync 2-way but it can sync the events only on the primary calendar. Install the Google Calendar Sync tool.
• Choose the 1-way sync option: Microsoft Outlook Calendar to Google Calendar. This will incrementally sync all the meetings on your work calendar to the primary calendar of your Google account.

Now, the learning part

If you have completed the steps mentioned above, your office calendar and Google calendar would be in sync now. The problem boils down to sending SMS reminders for your meetings. When the events from your Outlook calendar is synced with the Google calendar, the SMS reminders will not be set to those events as Outlook supports only the Pop-up reminders. Your task is to write a desktop based utility which will open all the synced events and add SMS reminders to them. You can use Google Calendar API to add / delete / modify events on your calendar and add / delete / update reminders of an event. I prefer writing the utility as a desktop one as the scheduling can be done easily. Refer to the client library developer guide here.

I have the working code for doing this job. Please ping me if you need any help at any stage of the development.

-- Varun

This week on Twitter [July 18, 2010]

Science & Technology

• The most important algorithms. Link.
• Space saving furniture. Link.
• Mouseless, the invisible computer mouse. Link.
• Amazon hooks students with a free year of Amazon Prime. Link.
• Amazon opens Super Computing service. Link.
• "SiteOnMobile" takes internet to the masses with low-end mobiles. Web access via SMS. Link.
• Which came first? Chicken or egg? Scientists say its chicken. Link.
• Apple buys Google Earth like product. Link.
• OpenSuse 11.3 released. Link.
• The world's only immortal animal. Link.
• Firefox 4 Beta 1 released. Link.
• Adobe Flash is going 3D. Link.

Social Media

• Employees challenged to crack Facebook security, succeed. Link.
• Twitter confirms analytics product. Link.
• Facebook's Open Graph going mobile. Link.

Google

• Google's URL shortener for your domain. Link.
• GMail gets rich text signatures. Link.
• Update on China. Link.
• Google Maps gets shortened URLs. Link.
• Google secretly invested in Zynga, preparing to launch Google Games? Link.
• Google's anagram easter egg. Link.
• App Inventor to ease application development on Android. Link.
• Picasa web integrates with Picnik. Link.
• Google Maps celebrated its fifth birthday. Link.
• YouTube hit by HTML vulnerability. Link.
• 4K videos coming to YouTube. Link.

Gadgets

• Android targets China and India for growth. Link.
• Browsing experience Android vs iPhone 4. Link.
• Apple iPhone 4 catches fire. Link.
• World's first mobile phone projector. Its Android based. Link.
• Apple to give away free cases to iPhone 4 users suffering from death grip. Link.
• Nexus One changes in availability. Link.

India

• New Delhi Traffic Police issuing notice to violators using photos on Facebook wall. Link.
• Indian Rupee gets a symbol. Link.
• Tatkal booking made easy for common man. Link.

Sports

• Spain won the FIFA World Cup 2010.
• World's best off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan to retire from Test cricket. Link.
• Tickets available for World Cup Cricket 2011. Link.

-- Varun

Aqualux 3D - New 3D display technology using water drops!

Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new 3D holographic projection system trade named as "Aqualux 3D" using water drops. The refraction of light on water has been the main concept behind this system. The idea was born when the scientists were trying to understand the reflection / refraction of light on water drops for building better car headlights.

More details can be found here and the video with technical details of the system is available here.Thanks to @nanda_kumar_R for the info.

-- Varun

Tatkal booking made easy for common man

Here is a good news for all those who use Indian Railways as their primary mode of transportation. Tatkal booking has just been made easy for the common man. To increase the chances of common man getting a Tatkal ticket, the Indian railway ministry has taken this much appreciated decision - travel agents  /  any web agents will not be given access to the Indian Railways site during the first hour of the Tatkal booking. 

What does it mean for the travel agents?

There are lots of travel agents spread across India making their living by reserving tickets on Indian railways. They typically charge somewhere between 20 and100 INR extra per ticket based on the distance and the service class of the journey. They have the option to book the tickets in bulk and with that the limited number of Tatkal seats get over real fast. Indian Railways move will definitely be a big blow to this section of people.

What does it mean for you and me?

• Indian Railways site will not be bombarded with huge number of requests from the travel agents. Thus, the site will have increased accessibility from 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM for e-Ticket booking. (Though, I have the strong feeling that Indian Railways should improve their infra-structure. They should try to use the infrastructure services of some of the leading players like Amazon)
• Bulk booking options at the major reservation centers also have been denied for the first hour of Tatkal booking.
• This is a good positive sign that Indian Railways is trying to address the ticket booking woes of its passengers.

Plan your travel well in advance and let those who are really in need of Tatkal tickets get them. For improving your chances of Tatkal ticket booking and some tips, check this.

Source : The Economic Times

-- Varun

Mouseless, the invisible computer mouse

Mouseless is a research project worked upon by Pranav Mistry of the MIT Fluid Interfaces group. The project aims at building an invisible computer mouse that provides the familiarity of interaction of a physical mouse without actually needing a real hardware mouse. Check out the video below to know more about how it works. A fully functional prototype system of ‘Mouseless’ has been built and the cost  for the same is around $20.

-- Varun

Google’s URL shortener for your domain

Google’s URL shortener (http://goo.gl) which was released few months back is a service that squeezes long URLs to a shorter one for easy sharing. The service is not available for use through a separate web interface but it is available only via other Google Products. Some of the features like personalized short URLs, usage tracking of links are still not available for the broader consumer use. If you have Gone Google and are using Google Apps for your domain, there is an application from Google available in Google Apps Marketplace with all these features. How do I get it for my domain?

• Sign in to your Google apps account as admin.
• Add the application “Google Short Links” to your domain from here.
• Create a custom URL to the application. For example, sl.mydomain.com.
• Add a CNAME record to your domain host. This should be done from your domain hosting service.
• You are all set here to use the Google Short Links from the URL chosen above.

I have tried this application, I am very impressed with the user interface and the faster redirection to the source URL. If you are aware of the trick to generate personalized short URLs with http://goo.gl/<myurl>, please share it as a comment.

-- Varun

This week on Twitter [July 04, 2010]

Science & Technology

• Firefox 3.6.4 released with crash protection. Link.
• HTML5 showcases of Google, Apple and Microsoft. Link.
• Firefox 3.6.6 released for patching the frequent Flash player crashes. Link.
• Cell phones as eye doctors. Link.

Social Media

• Facebook launches Hover-cards. Link.
• Twitter to publish shopping deals through @EarlyBird account. Link.
• Google Me social networking to take on Facebook. Link.
• Facebook unveils suggested interests list. Link.
• Facebook unleashes Open-Graph search engine. Link.

Google

• Google Spreadsheet adds format painter. Link.
• YouTube’s world cup Easter egg. Link.
• Google apps training and certification tools for teachers. Link.
• Google to use more HTML5 features in GMail. Link.
• Google’s update on China. Link.
• Google adds real-time web analytics to Blogger. Link.

Gadgets

• Infibeam, India has announced its Windows and Android based tablets named “Phi”. Link.
• The newly launced Apple iPhone 4 has reception issues. Link.
• Microsoft Kin discontinued after just 48 days. Link.
• Android Vs iPhone 4 multitasking compared. Link.
• Yahoo gets serious on Android development. Launches Y! Mail and Messenger for Android. Link.
• Android 2.2 Froyo rolled out to all the Nexus One users. Link.
• Amazon Kindle for Android released. Kindle for iPhone to have audio and video support. Link.

India

• Infibeam has launched its own brand of mobile phones in India. Link.
• Facebook, Hyderabad India is hiring 500 people. Link.
• Mukesh Ambani, D.E. Shaw close to Joint Venture. Link.
• Get address proof from Indian Postal department. Link.

Events

• TEDx events in India. Link.
• Dev Camp, Chennai on July 10. Link.
• Seth Godwin in India on July 07. Link.

Misc

• The next version of Eclipse IDE “Helios” is out. Link.

-- Varun

Android 2.2 Froyo installation issue

Google has been rolling out the latest version of Android 2.2 (Froyo) to all the Nexus One users over the air. However, the installation does not seem to be smooth for all the users. The installation went on smoothly on my phone which is T-Mobile compatible Nexus One. Some of the users of AT & T compatible Nexus One seem to be suffering from some installation issues. Friend of mine (Sreekanth) became one of the victims and here are his experiments with Froyo installation.

Froyo installation issue haunts Nexus One users

What is the issue?

Yesterday night, my Nexus One got the latest release of Android 2.2 Firmware through OTA.  I started the download process which took about 2 minutes to complete. Once the download was complete, the mobile got restarted to perform the installation process. The installation process ran for the next few minutes followed by a restart for the initial boot.

Unfortunately, the initial boot didn’t proceed after the “X” logo followed by a series of restarts for every 2 minutes for quite a long time. I left it as such the whole night.  When I saw the device the next morning, it was still the same. Upon Google search, I found out that few other people also faced similar issue with this OTA update.  Also I found that this issue is happening for the AT&T version of Nexus One mobiles. With no other option left, I decided to apply the firmware update manually.

Manual Update

• First download the manual update from the internet.

• Power down the device and remove the memory card.

• Rename the downloaded file as update.zip and copy it in the root directory of the memory card

• Load the memory card into the device

• Power up the mobile by pressing the power button, volume down key and track ball. This way of starting the device leads you to the boot menu.

• A screen would appear showing your phone’s system searching for various files. Scroll down to “recovery” and press the “Power” button.

• When you see the triangle with an exclamation point symbol, press the “Power” and “Volume Up” buttons at the same time.

• From the menu that appears, select “Apply sdcard:update.zip.”

• This initiates the installation process and the phone gets rebooted automatically once the process got over.

Downloading the correct update file is the tricky part here. After few unsuccessful attempts, I finally found out this particular update which worked perfect with me.

-- Sreekanth

Google, please look into this and fix this as soon as possible before it is blown up like an iPhone 4 reception issue.

Android 2.2 Froyo – What do I like about it?

Google has been rolling out the Android 2.2 (code named Froyo) update to all the Nexus One users over the air. I got the update yesterday and have been trying the new things on Froyo. Trying to reconcile what they said it will have and what it has.

View Full Album

Here is a list of things I liked about Froyo:

• Performance improvement & enhanced browser speed. Performance improvement is one of the main features used to advertise Froyo. But, I could not notice it clearly as I never had to wait for any operation even with the older version of Android 2.1. Search seems to be very faster than the previous version. Rendering on browsers seem to be faster with the V8 Javascript engine.
• Flash Player 10.1. Flash player seems to be friendly with the browser. I have tried out few flash gaming sites like miniclip.com and I was able to play some of the most addictive PC games on mobile. Played for around an hour and Flash player managed to run without any crashes. Now, I can play TED videos directly from the browser. :-)
• Improved Camera and Gallery. Camera interface has been revamped and it looks cleaner now. It has been made easy to control zoom, flash, white balance, geo-tagging, focus and exposure with the new interface. Another cool stuff with the camera is the flash mode for videos which means that videos can be shot at night as well.
• Android Cloud to device messaging. Android Cloud to device is a  mechanism which allows sending messages from cloud to your device. I tried sending some bookmarks from Google Chrome to my phone using ChromeToPhone extension. Once the message is sent from the Cloud, it will open the browser / Google maps on your phone with the web page / location. This is an awesome feature. 
• Apps on SD Card. Though Froyo supports installation of applications on SD card, most of the developers have not implemented this so far. Little disappointed over that.
• Improved User Interface for GMail, GTalk, Calendar applications. Changes have been made with the objective of improving the accessibility. 
• Misc. Other noticeable features include Tethering & Wi-Fi Hotspot, Contacts grouping on Call log, Enterprise support, etc.

Froyo is not a major update but has a set of significant new features. I am loving it. The next major version of Android 3.0 (code named as GingerBread) is likely to focus more on the User Interface to avoid the fragmentation problem.

-- Varun

USB tethering and Wi-Fi hotspot on Android 2.2 Froyo

Android 2.2 Froyo has come with built-in tethering and Wi-Fi hotspot support. You can share your phone’s data connection with your laptop / other devices without having to install any other third-party application. On the Nexus One, you can share your phone’s data connection with up to six devices at once, by turning your phone into a portable Wi-Fi hotspot. USB tethering

• Turn on the USB tethering from Home > Settings >  Wireless & networks > Tethering & portable hotspot > USB tethering.  No additional application is needed for Tethering.
• After the USB tethering is turned on, connect your Android device to the laptop.
• Once the Android device is connected to your laptop, you will be asked to install the driver.
• Download and install the driver "Android USB Ethernet / RNDIS” from here.
• You are all set here. Enjoy your phone’s data connection on your laptop.

Wi-Fi hotspot

• Turn on Wi-Fi hotspot from Home > Settings > Wireless & networks > Tethering & portable hotspot > Portable Wi-Fi hotspot. No additional application is needed for this.
• You can configure the name and the security type of the network from Portable Wi-Fi hotspot settings. At most, six devices can share your phone’s data connection.

For USB tethering on Android phones before Froyo, check this out. More details about USB tethering & Wi-Fi hotspot can be found here.

-- Varun