Happy birthday Blogger!

One of the best blogging platforms available till date, Blogger, turned 11 this month. I have been using blogger even before it was acquired by Google. It is a very good blogging platform even for a person with less technical knowledge. To celebrate its birthday, Google has arranged for the first ever Blogger global birthday party (BloggerFiesta).

 Hyderabad Bloggers meet

The Hyderabad bloggers meet (BloggerFiesta) was organized by the city based six-digit blogger Amit Bhawani at Ohris Jiva. The number of entries for the same had been restricted to 50. Around 40 bloggers turned up for the event which started around 7 PM. The event started with a quick round of introduction from the bloggers present there. There were people from different background and it was nice catching up with the fellow bloggers and their interests. After that people started networking with each other while enjoying their food. Chetan Bhawani (Amit’s brother) and his friends organized an open quiz for the participants and goodies were given to the winners. The quiz was interesting and I participated actively answering many questions. Won a gift voucher and a T-shirt too. :) Though I have met Amit on few other occasions before, just happened to talk to him personally today.

Few valuable tips about blogging were given to the participants as a hand-out. Though Amit was actively answering the questions asked to him, it could have been better had he given a talk on blogging instead of just the hand-out. Also, the choice of place could have been better. Overall it was a good experience catching up with few interesting people from Hyderabad.

Thanks to Amit and his team for organizing the bloggers meet.

-- Varun

[How to] Change fonts on Nexus One

Few days back, I had rooted my Nexus One using the article I had posted about rooting the Nexus One. One of the main reasons behind that move was the inability of Android to render the text in my mother tongue (Tamil). The plain vanilla Android 2.2 does support only a limited set of fonts and it has no support for Unicode yet. DroidSans is the default font used on Android devices. Fonts are placed inside /system/fonts folder of the Android system. After rooting my device, I tried installing few fonts which support Unicode char-set and my Nexus One is able to render Tamil characters now. However, some special glyphs of the Tamil language are not getting rendered properly. This is something to do with the position of the characters. Anyways, now I can read my favorite Tamil blogs on my dearest Nexus One.

  

Nexus One displaying Tamil characters!!

Here are the steps to be followed to change fonts:

• First requirement here is that your device must be rooted.
• Find out the font which supports Unicode char set. I have used “Arial Unicode MS” for rendering the Tamil characters.
• Download and install the latest Android SDK 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.
• Connect your Android device to your PC on debug mode. Enable USB debugging on your phone. Settings > Applications > Development > USB debugging.
• On your laptop, open a command prompt and enter “adb shell”.
• By default, /system partition is mounted as read-only. Need to re-mount the same in read-write mode. Follow the instructions here to do this.
• Take a backup of the DroidSans font in super user mode. “adb shell”  > su > mv /system/fonts/DroidSans.ttf /system/fonts/DroidSansOriginal.ttf
• After that, you have to push the Unicode font you have selected by executing the command “adb push <path to your font file> /system/fonts/DroidSans.ttf” So, we are just replacing the DroidSans font with the new one. The font you are choosing should support the characters originally supported by DroidSans. Otherwise, this is what will happen.

-- Varun

One-Click root for Nexus One

If you are a tech savvy person, probably the first thing you will try to do on your Android is rooting it. Rooting is the process of gaining root privileges on your Android device. It enables an user to override protected features of the Android Operating System. After rooting the device, one can install the unofficial firmware images. There are different ways of rooting the device. The common method is to unlock the boot loader using the fastboot command. Remember, this will void the warranty. You will even see a warning from Google before doing this. Our friends at XDA have developed lots of tools to ease the rooting process. Quick rooter for Android 2.2 is one such popular tool. It does not install a full ROM, but, meant to be flashed over an existing Froyo installation. Rooting gets further easier with the new application “Universal Androot”

One-Click root

• Universal Androot is the application which does the magic. The beta version of it can be downloaded from the developers site. Open the application after installing it.
• Just click on the “Root :-)” button to unlock your device. Kudos to the developer. It works. “SuperUser” application will also be installed after you root your device. This is used to allow / deny when someone request for root access.
• The application also provides an option to unroot your device. It is working with minor issues.

Supported devices
Google Nexus One (2.2), HTC Hero (2.1), HTC Magic (1.5), Dell Streak (2.1), Motorola Milestone (2.1), Motorola XT701, Motorola XT800 (2.1), Motorola ME511, Sony Ericsson X10 (1.6), Sony Ericsson X10 Mini Pro (1.6), Acer Liquid (2.1), Vibo A688 (1.6)

Disclaimer: I am not responsible if you mess up your phone trying this application.

(via xda-developers)

-- Varun

3DS, the glasses free 3D technology!!

Three-dimensional (3D) movies / videos are cool but you need to have the special glasses to enjoy them. If you are a person wearing glasses already, 3D glasses are a definite pain. Here is a new technology which, will be part of the upcoming gaming console Nintendo 3DS, can produce 3D effects without the need for glasses. Check out the video by Kombo’s Jeff Grubb to know how it works. More information can be found here.

Thanks to Nanda Kumar (@nanda_kumar_R) for sharing this info. On a different note, YouTube has been testing a video player for watching videos in 3D.

-- Varun

Nexus One Twin (HTC Desire) reaches India

The wait is finally over. HTC announces the launch of the Nexus One twin (HTC Desire) in India. The phone has the similar configuration as that of Nexus One in terms of the processor, memory, camera, resolution, etc. HTC has tied up with Tata DoCoMo to launch the phone in India. The cost of the phone is R 28,900/- which is quite reasonable when compared to the cost of iPhone 3GS in India. Trust me, it is powerful than iPhone 3GS. The new HTC Desire will be available starting today at all authorized HTC resellers across the country.   Few differences

1. Optical trackpad instead of a trackball which I have hardly used on my Nexus One.
2. FM radio. Though the Nexus One uses the same Broadcom BCM4329 WiFi/FM transmit/receive chipset, Google has not enabled it officially. Need to use a modified kernel and ROM for listening to FM Radio on Nexus One.
3. No dual microphone to cancel the noise in HTC Desire.
4. HTC Sense UI.
5. Android 2.1. Froyo update will be available soon.

If you are planning to buy an Android based smart phone in India, this is the best phone available. The next version of it, HTC Desire HD HTC Ace, has already been spotted on Engadget.

-- Varun