[How to] Lock applications on your Android device

Smartphones are getting smarter day-by-day with cool new features but the major concern with them is the privacy. From your smart phone, you might want to access your personal mail accounts, bank accounts. etc. Are they safe? Though Android supports different ways of screen locking security options (Pattern, Pin, Password), they work as a master key for the entire device. ES Security Manager is a free app which helps you to keep your private data and apps safe.

Steps to password protect your app

• Install ES Security Manager from the Android market. If you use App Brain for managing your applications, install it from here.
• Open the application. It offers three services:
  • Application Protector – Adds password to protect app privacy.
  • Threat Detector – Detects if there are any threats on your system.
  • Remote Locker – When phone is lost, lock it remotely, get its location,contacts,SIM card info,SMS back.
• Click on ‘Application Protector’. You can either use a password or a pattern to lock your application. Choose a password or pattern.
• Lock the applications you wanted to protect. Whenever someone opens the locked application, he / she will be prompted to enter the password.
• ES Security Manager helps you to keep your private data and apps safe.

-- Varun

SPARSH - Touch to copy, Touch to paste

SPARSH is a research project worked upon by Pranav Mistry of the MIT Fluid Interfaces group. The project SPARSH explores a novel interaction method to transfer data from one digital device to another device in a real fun way using the underlying cloud. Touch to copy the data and touch on another device to paste the saved content. "Touch whatever you want to copy. Now it is saved conceptually in you. Next, touch the device you want to paste/pass the saved content." Technical details and the timeline of this project are not yet available.

-- Varun

[Review] IP Webcam – Turn your phone into a network camera

Earlier, I have reviewed two applications “USB Webcam” and “DroidCam Wireless Webcam” for turning your phone into a web cam. “IP Webcam” is another application which does almost the same but in a better way. The best thing about this app is its support for multiple view options. You can view the video feeds of your phone from a browser or stream it on your favorite media player.

Steps to setup IP Webcam

• Install the app from Android market. If you use App Brain for managing your applications, install it from here.
• Open the app from your device.It will open the settings page.
• Specify an user name and password if you want to password protect your video feeds.
• Choose the desired image size and frame rate.
• Choose the TCP port (Default: 8080). Don’t change this field if you are not sure about what you are doing. (IP Webcam will start a server on your device and listen to this specified port)
• Click on ‘Start server’. This will start the server on the specified port and will start streaming your video feed.
• The server information will be shown at the bottom of the page after it is started. Visit the page from your browser to view the video feed and other viewing options.

Highlights

• Multiple view options.
  • Stream it on your favorite media player like VLC
  • Use Java browser plug-in and view it on browser
  • Use JavaScript to update frames in browser
  • Use browser’s built-in viewer
  • Connect to PC for use with Skype and other video chats
  • Take immediate photo.
• No need to setup server on your laptop.
• Easy to setup the Windows driver.
• Ability to change the image size and the frame rate.

Lowlights

• The app drains more battery if you allow it to stay awake. (But, its quite acceptable though)

In short, IP Webcam is an excellent piece of work by the developer Pas. Really appreciate it. If you like this app, please rate the app from the Android market.

-- Varun

Crochet Doily Art Car

Its been a while but this Crochet Doily Art Car was found Prague and its an old Skoda Octavia Combi was well worth the wait.via

Nexus One OTA – Android 2.2.1 FRG83D build Part 1

I received an OTA update this morning. The update is the first one of a two-part System update. This part is required to prepare the device to receive the new Android System. The second update containing the new Android System will be received soon after. This confirms that Android 2.3 GingerBread is coming to Nexus One soon. :) Update: This has turned out to be yet another disappointment for Nexus One owners who are waiting for Android 2.3 code named as GingerBread. Both the updates are related to Android 2.2.1 FRG83D build. People who have got the second update confirmed the same. Thanks to @sreekanthnaga for the info. Apologies for the misleading information. I wish Google sends out more technical details in the OTA updates. I originally thought that the first update was for FRG83D and the next one for Android 2.3.

-- Varun

[How to] Install Android market on Emulator

Android Emulator is a virtual mobile that is packaged along with the Android SDK. It runs on your computer and can be used to prototype, develop and test applications without having to buy a physical device. Almost all of the hardware and software features of a typical mobile device are mimicked in the Android emulator. However, if you want to try out some apps from the Android market, you can’t do that with the emulator as it does not include ‘Android market’. Here is a step-by-step guide to enable Android market in the emulator.

Steps to enable Android market in the emulator

1. Download and install the latest Android SDK (Android 2.2, API 8, revision 2) from here. This comes up with all the tools needed for development and testing of your application. Make sure the driver ‘ADB interface’ is installed on your machine. In most of the cases, the driver will be installed directly once you plug-in the device. [The SDK installation location will be referred to as SDK_LOCATION in the rest of the article]

2. Next step is to create a Android Virtual Device. Select ‘Virtual Devices’ from the left pane of the Android SDK and AVD Manager. Create a new virtual device with the details mentioned in the screenshot below. The screen might be frozen for few minutes while the virtual device is being created. 3. After the device is created, go to the location ‘%userprofile%/.android/avd’. You will find a folder named ‘DemoDevice.avd’. Copy the system image ‘system,img’ from ‘SDK_LOCATION/platforms/android-8/images’ to the folder 'DemoDevices.avd’.

4. Start the emulator specifying the partition size. From cmd: emulator –avd DemoDevice –partition-size 100. (100 MB will be allotted for user space). Emulator opens up and it looks like the one below. Note: If the command emulator is not recognized, add SDK_LOCATION/tools to the PATH variable.

5. From cmd, execute ‘adb pull /system/build.prop .’. This will copy the file build.prop to your current working directory. Open it with your favorite text editor and change the property ‘ro.config.nocheckin=yes’. This is needed to fix the freezing of market downloads. Related article.

6. Now, we have to push back the modified build.prop. This is not as easy as pulling it out. First, you have to mount the /system partition in read-write mode. Check out this to know how to do that. After the partition is remounted, execute the adb push command to push back the build.prop ‘adb push build.prop /system/.’

7. The next thing is to install the Market application. Download ‘Vending.apk’ from this thread. Google Services framework is a pre-requisite for Android market. To get ‘GoogleServicesFramework.apk’, download upload.zip from here and extract the zip to find the .apk file inside /system/app. Download 'GoogleServcesFramework.apk' from here. Push both these .apk to the device. ‘adb push Vending.apk /system/app/.’ ‘adb push GoogleServicesFramework.apk /system/app/.’. Also, delete the  SdkSetup.apk from the device. ‘adb shell rm /system/app/SdkSetup.apk’. Make sure the SdkSetup.apk is deleted otherwise the emulator will be reverted back to its original stage.

8. Close the emulator. Delete the images userdata.img, userdata-qemu.img and cache.img from ‘%userprofile%/.android/avd/DemoDevice.avd’. Start the emulator again from Android SDK and AVD Manager. Android Market will be available on the emulator now. On opening the market, you will be prompted to connect with your Google account. Connect with your Google account and install your favorite apps on the emulator.

Note: Installation of apps from Android market seems to be very slow in the emulator. Market app crashed couple of times before I get the chance to install the apps. Also, I could not find the most popular Android game ‘Angry Birds’ in the market. Installing the same from its .apk didn’t work either. I am trying to tweak the emulator to make it work smoothly with Android Market. If you have any tips for the same, please post them as comments here.

Update: Uttam Hoode has tried this approach with Android 2.3 SDK and it worked fine.

-- Varun

Use ‘GreaseFire’ to discover GreaseMonkey scripts

If you find a feature to be missing on your favorite site, you can request for the same from site admin / service provider. But, the process may take some time before you get the feature. GreaseMonkey is the way to go if you want to get it yourself quickly.

GreaseMonkey

GreaseMonkey allows you to customize any website to your taste. It was originally written as a Firefox add-on by Aaron Boodman (@aboodman) (currently working with Google). Eventually, Chrome 4 added support for GreaseMonkey scripts. A GreaseMonkey (popularly known as GM or user scripts) script is a JavaScript which executes on top of the original site with few security restrictions. It is easy to get started with GM scripts with minimal JavaScript knowledge. To get started on GM, check out this community documentation “GreasePot”. There is also a community to share the user scripts written by users all across the globe. Check it out here. http://userscripts.org

GreaseFire

Userscripts.org has thousands of scripts for different websites. So, before authoring a new script, check if the script exists already there. ‘GreaseFire’ is a tool to discover user scripts applicable for the current page. It is available as Firefox add-on and also as a Chrome extension. When ever you visit a site, GreaseFire will search the Userscripts.org directories and list down the users scripts which can be installed on that page. GreaseFire uses a ranking system to rank the scripts before listing them to you.

• Firefox. Firefox users can download the add-on from here. The add-on is around 3 MB in size. After installing the add-on, it will add a icon in the Firefox status bar. Clicking on it will list down the user scripts available for the current site.

• Chrome. Chrome users can download the Chrome extension from here. The extension is around 13 MB in size. After installing the extension, a new icon will appear on the address bar indicating if the site has any user scripts. Click on the icon to see the available user scripts. 

-- Varun

Auto-Tweet your Google Reader Shared Items without using any third-party services

Google Reader is one of the most popular Atom and RSS feed aggregator service from Google. It allows you to share the articles you like with your friends (followers). You may want to link your Twitter account with Google Reader so that whenever you share something, the same will be shared on your Twitter stream as well. I wrote a script back in Jan 2009 to semi-automate the same. But, the script has stopped working as Twitter supports only OAuth authentication now. There are lots of third-party apps / plugins available to do the same. But, you will have to connect to those services with your Google / Twitter credentials. Here is a simple way to auto-tweet your Google Reader Shared Items without using any third party service.

Steps to Auto-Tweet your Google Reader Shared Items

1. Feed Discovery. Whenever you share items on Google Reader, you will have a Public atom feed associated with your account. To know your feed URL, go to “Your stuff” > “Shared Items”. “Your Shared Items” page will open up. Click on the “show details” link at the right top corner. Details will show the Feed URL associated with your shared items. Note: Make sure your items are public. Click on the “sharing settings” to change the settings of your shared items.

2. Burning your Feed. The next step is to burn your feed. You can use Google’s FeedBurner. Go to http://feedburner.google.com. Copy / Paste the Feed URL (from step#1) in the ‘Burn a feed right this instant’ text box. Click on ‘Next’. In the next screen, FeedBurner will ask you to provide the feed title and an address for the feed. After providing the details, click on ‘Next’. FeedBurner will burn the feed for you. It will show a screen to setup FeedBurner stats. You can do it later. Click on ‘Skip directly to feed management’.

3. Linking with your Twitter Account.  The last step is to link your Twitter to the feed which is just burnt. Go to the ‘Publicize’ tab and select ‘Socialize’ option from the sidebar. Click on ‘Add a Twitter account’ button. This will open the Twitter page asking you to sign in to Twitter if you have not signed in already. Then, it will ask you to authorize access to your Twitter account for Google. Allow access to Google. After adding the Twitter account, you can configure few settings like formatting options, item count, items filtering, etc. After choosing the desired setting, click on ‘Activate’ to activate the service. That’s all. FeedBurner will periodically check for new feeds from Google Reader shared items and post them on Twitter stream automatically. Note: Your twitter account is linked directly with the Google account without having to use any third-party service.

This is what I would recommend – Read it on Reader, Share it on Twitter. Enjoying reading and happy sharing.

-- Varun

Google Docs – Mobile edits, AutoCorrect and more

Google Docs has added a bunch of new features. Two things which will stand-out among these features are AutoCorrect and Mobile edits. With AutoCorrect, you can type faster with fewer mistakes. Google Docs new documents editor supports editing on your mobile browser.

AutoCorrect

A feature to substitute text automatically. For example, if you type (c), the docs editor will replace it to ©. You can even add your own custom auto-corrects. To add custom auto-corrects, from your Google Docs editor go to Tools > Preferences. Add the word to be replaced in the ‘Replace’ field and the word to be used as replacement in the ‘With’ field. This feature is very much similar to what Microsoft Word offers except that there is no support for formatted replacement text yet. More details here.

LaTex in equations

Many LaTex shortcuts have been added to the equations editor. If you are familiar with the LaTex format, you will get to enjoy this feature. Check out the list of shortcuts added. Microsoft Word has good support for LaTex formatting with the help of plug-ins. More details here.

Mobile edits

Google Docs new documents editor supports editing documents on the go from your mobile browser. This is a much needed one and I no longer have to depend on any of the third party providers for this. This feature will be rolled in the next days to Android devices with Froyo (2.2) and iOS (3+). More details here.

-- Varun

[Data Mining] New Contest in TunedIT: Prediction of Biological Properties of Molecules

TunedIT, a leading research platform in the area of data mining, encourages participation in the new competition “Prediction of Biological Properties of Molecules” launched at TunedIT Challenges platform. The competition, with a cash prize of 1,000 USD is organized by Simulations Plus, Inc., and affiliated with the top statistical and data mining conference, 2011 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining.

The task is related to prediction of an important biological property of molecules from their chemical structures – a routine task in the domain of cheminformatics. The modeling dataset contains two classes of chemical molecules: one with and one without the said property. Using this dataset, contestants will have to build a binary classification model with the goal of classifying new molecules into the two classes. Prizes worth 1,000 USD in total will be awarded to the winners. After the contest, top solutions will be presented at the SIAM ICDM’11 Contest Workshop. The challenge has already started on Nov 16, 2010 and will last till Jan 24, 2011. More details can be found here.

Prev challenges: Road Traffic Prediction for Intelligent Navigation. Solution.

-- Varun

[How to] Turn off Google Instant Previews

Google launched Instant Previews few days ago – a feature which adds screenshots along with the search results. Though they claim that Instant Previews will help the users to find the results more precisely, personally, I found this feature to be annoying. Unfortunately, there is no option available yet to turn off “Instant Previews”. Turning off “Instant” search feature has no effect on “Instant Previews” either. I am surprised that not many technical journalists have raised concerns about this UI clutter so far. I have written a simple script to toggle the Instant Previews.

How to Install?

Compatible Browsers: Firefox 3+, Chrome 4+

Firefox

• Install the GreaseMonkey add-on for Firefox from here and restart the browser.
• Get the script by pointing your browser to this.
• GreaseMonkey Installation dialog box will appear. Please click on the “Install” button.
• You are all set to use the script. Open Google and perform a search. Click on the link “Disable Instant Previews” at the right top to disable the Instant Previews.

Chrome

• Chrome has native support for GreaseMonkey scripts.No additional extensions are needed to use the script.
• Get the script by pointing your browser to this.
• You will be prompted with a security alert. Please click on the ‘Continue’ button.
• The script will be installed as an extension. Open Google and perform a search. Click on the link “Disable Instant Previews” at the right top to disable the Instant Previews.

Please write to me if you find any issues with the script.

Update:

New version (V 1.1) is available now.

1. Instant Previews will be disabled by default.
2. Remember 'Instant Previews' setting across sessions. For e.g., if you have disabled the Instant Previews in the current session, the same setting will be remembered for the next session as well.

Userscripts.org seems to go down frequently these days. Here is an alternate link to the script.

-- Varun

Google Tech Talk: Challenges and Learnings in Enterprise Search Quality

Google India is organizing yet another Tech talk on 19th Nov 2010. The topic for the same will be “Challenges and Learnings in Enterprise Search Quality”. Dr. Shailesh Kumar, Senior Software Engineer, Google is delivering the talk. The event is free and open to all in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology and related fields. Register here.

Talk abstract

Enterprises are growing in age, size, and diversity and so is their repository of internal documents e.g. e-mails, internal wikis, special pages for people, projects, and products, etc. Searching this ever growing corpus with high precision, recall, and scale is becoming increasingly important and difficult for Enterprises.

This talk will highlight some of the fundamental differences between web search and enterprise search problems and then a number of opportunities for improving Enterprise search in the light of these differences will be discussed.

Talk     : Challenges and Learnings in Enterprise Search Quality
Date    : Friday, Nov 19, 2010, 5:30 to 6:45 PM
Venue : Google India Campus, Hyderabad

-- Varun

Bollywood Taxi Art Car - Basanti the Bollywood Amby

I received this wonderful Indian Bollywood Taxi Art Car made from an Amby car, one of India Iconic cars from Valay the other day. Not only is it painted on the outside but its also got a great festive disco feel on the inside with plenty of red plush material and few Indian disco balls.. This is the Indian version of the Ultimate Taxi from Aspen Colorado.Basanti is Julian Parr's brain child.It's

Hot Tricycle Retro Group known as La Bala Humana

Don't know what or who these people are but its all about the attitude. This dude and his monster retro stash posing on his crazy home made tricycle in front of row the bodacious tricycle babes is all about attitude and they have it going on. Know as La Bala Humana.

The Telstar of Whangamata Sticker Art Car Highly Contagious

This Sticker Art car was sent in by Murray McKenzie from Whangamata, a beach town in New Zealand. The art car is a 1995 Ford Telstar hatchback covered in free stickers from a local surf shop that took about 6 months to complete. I think this sticker art car might be contagious by the looks of the developing sticker rash on car parked next to it.I believe now might the time to put Whangamata under

Floating Mobile Phone Box

This floating Mobile Phone Box is probably a photoshop job but it sure is funny looking. via

Google Instant Previews

Google has been adding lots of cool new features to Google Instant. The latest addition to the feature list is the Instant Previews. Though Google has been testing this feature for quite some time, its out for a wider audience just now. This feature will add a magnifying glass icon next to each search result and clicking on that will instantly open a preview of the web page. Interesting thing is that the relevant sections will be highlighted on the preview page. Try it out here.

Highlights

• Quickly compare results – A quick visual comparison of the search results helps you to pick the best result. Google claims that people who use Instant Previews are about 5% more likely to be satisfied with the search result.
• Highlight relevant Counter – Relevant sections will be highlighted in the preview. This will be really useful if the content you are searching for is buried somewhere in the page. This feature is not part of any of the existing search add-ons which does the same job as Instant Previews.

Google will be rolling out Instant Previews in the new few days. You can try it out from here.

Update: Pressing the right arrow key on the selected search result will also show the preview of the page. Google does not provide any option to disable 'Instant Previews' (even disabling Google Instant will not disable Instant Previews) Source: Google Operating System.

-- Varun

Pirate Ship Engineering Marvel at Burning Man

 This Pirate ship called the Lost Ship, seeing here cruising the hi desert seas of Burning Man is modern marvel of art and engineering. For more details I would suggest going to their blog so you can see a more detailed view of how they put it all together.Captain Andy started dreaming of a pirate ship with a huge mechanized wheel during his first visit to Burning Man in 2004. As a structural

[How to] Use your Android Phone as a web cam for your laptop?

There are lots of applications available in the Android market to use your Android phone as a web cam for your laptop. Android application “USB Webcam” has been my personal favorite so far. But, the “USB Webcam” project is sort of dead now. “DroidCam Wireless Webcam” is another application which comes close to “USB Webcam”. It works over WiFi and streams your phone’s camera output to your computer. DroidCam allows you to configure the camera settings - Width, Height and Frame rate. However, the video quality of DroidCam is not as good as USB Webcam.

Steps to setup your Android phone as a webcam:

1. On your phone, install the application “DroidCam Wireless Webcam” from the Android market. The size of the application is around 100 KB.
2. On your PC, download the latest version of Windows component from here. Extract the zip file and execute the installer file (DroidCam.exe). Admin privileges are required to install and register DroidCam windows driver. Open any application (for eg Skype) that uses WebCam. This will automatically start the windows component. You may have to disable your Firewall for the application to work.
3. Open the application on your phone. Click on Connect > Add new PC. Specify the IP address of your PC and a human readable name for it. Save the settings and click on the name / IP address to connect to your PC.
4. You are all set here. Any application which uses the camera will take the video feeds from the “DroidCam” windows component.

DroidCam supports Windows XP / Vista / 7 and also 64-bit Windows. It has support for Linux as well. MAC version will be available soon. Read more about DroidCam from here.

Similar apps: USB Webcam, IP Webcam (supports multiple view options)

-- Varun

Happy Diwali 2010!

May this light of happiness, light up your life. May this Diwali be the most sparkling and lightening. The sights and sounds filling up your heart with joy and happiness.

Wishing you and your family a very Happy Diwali! :)

-- Varun

Crochet-Covered Morris Minor for Sale on eBay

This Crochet-Covered Morris Minor is for Sale on eBay , is a salvage from a New York City art exhibition. Probably created by insomniac grandma with not enough grand kids to keep her busy knitting sweaters. Any ways the current bid 1,525.00 so its not too late to get this cozy Morris Minor Art Car in time for the winter storm.

[How to] Use your favorite video as Live Wallpaper in Android

One of the coolest features of Android (2.1+) is its Live Wallpapers – richer, animated, interactive backgrounds on home screen. Android devices are shipped with few live wallpapers and you can download more from here. A live wallpaper is very similar to a normal Android application and has access to all the facilities of the platform: SGL (2D drawing), OpenGL (3D drawing), GPS, accelerometers, network access, etc. This article will help you to set your favorite video as a live wallpaper on your Android device.

Follow these steps

• ‘Video Live Wallpaper’ is the application which does the magic. The application can be installed from the market. It is available for free and it takes around 6.2 MB after installation. The application can not be moved to SD card.
• After the application is installed, open Launcher (Home). Press Menu from the Launcher.
• Select ‘Wallpaper’ > ‘Live wallpapers’ > ‘Video Live Wallpaper’. If you are not seeing this option on your device, please check if the application was installed properly.
• Select the video file or directory you want to be used as live wallpaper. ‘Settings’ > ‘Video file or directory’. You can also configure other options like Swiping smoothness from the Settings screen.
• Select the ‘Set wallpaper’ and your video will be used as live wallpaper.

If you are interested in creating your own live wallpaper, check out this sample.

-- Varun

Chicken Coupe 1971 Morris Traveler Art Car

Chicken Coup Art Car - AfterMichael Thompson is the creator of this Chicken Coupe Art Car made from a beat up old 1971 Morris Traveler in the heart of Norfolk Broads.He went looking for something a little more unusual to make into a hen house and asked a friend of his who owned a body-repair shop to keep his eyes peeled for an interesting vehicle that he could use. Weeks went by when one day

Aboriginal Toyota Art Car Basket made from Grass

This Australian Aborginal Toyota Art Car Basket was created using Tjanpi Grass by the Tjanpi Weavers Group headed by Artis Kantjupayi Benson using a lesser-known Aboriginal weaving art practice.The Grass Toyota art car ended up being 16ft long by 13 feet wide and 5m long, and 8.2 ft high and was was commissioned by the World Expo in Hanover Germany.While Kantjupayi sat on a chair leaning on her