Thejesh GN » Technology

Notes about Nokia Open Lab 2008

Thejesh GN — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 05:50:11 +0000

I am still trying to come out the euphoria. Out of my six days in Helsinki spent first three days geeking out. The idea of OpenLab was to bring together 35+ geeks from the field tech, blogging, programming, education, music and photography to discuss about social media, connected life, mobile life etc

Womworld had planned the event so meticulously that they had even scheduled sauna time. The pattern of discussion was completely new where we were made into four groups with little introduction to subjects. The objective being the *ideas* should come out of discussion. Then a leader from the every team presented it to the rest of the group. The members of the group were shuffled enough number time to create an opportunity for networking.

The first session started with social media and networking. Least common denominator amongst the participants was we all were on some social networking. So it was great subject to start the sessions. I did not know anything about others. Its not easy to talk when you don’t know whom you are talking to and they are best thirty five from around the world. More than that I am great listener than a talker. So my initial participation was listening to the comments made by other and in some cases making some comments. In the afternoon we had discussions on how to use collaborative and social tools at work, future films, games and usage of geo-location data.

Time was very limited. Each of the subject on the agenda would have taken a day. I still remember during our discussion on environment we had not even started the discussion when the bells went. Never the less, me and Jen continued our discussion about Bangalore autos, LPG and nuclear power. After a long time I found somebody who liked Bangalore amongst all the chaos. Jen said and I quote “Bangalore today is like LA in 80s. Its growing heavily, attracting people from all over the world. It will take time but it will become one of the best cities in the world”.

For me the best things were lunch and coffee breaks. I had great conversation with Steve about education in India and US. How education is becoming expensive and there is such a lack of good teachers in India etc.

Each and every conversation I had is memorable. It was the best part of the workshop. Lots of people to talk to and lot many different subjects. At the end of the third day we had just begun and it was already time to bid good bye.

I am not sure how this is going to help Nokia. Probably its going to help them if they want to build a new internet service or want to improve a service. Or they just wanted to feel the pulse of heavy internet/mobile users. Nokia kept all the conversations open and earned a lot of my respect.

Note: Cross posted at Bangalore Mirror Blog Talk.

How to upload video to 12 seconds from web

Thejesh GN — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:27:14 +0000

I have been using 12Seconds (aka video twitter) for a while now. You can send your 12seconds video to them by mail or record one on their website. If you already have a video there is no direct way to upload. But you can send it as an email attachment. But when I am public m/c I wouldn’t like to open my email. So I wrote a simple app to upload the video to your 12seconds account from web.

Watch the 12seconds how-to tutorial for the same uploaded using the same app

How to upload video to 12 seconds from web on 12seconds.tv

Your suggestions and comments are welcome. BTW dont forget to follow me on 12seconds.

I will be at Nokia Open Labs workshop - Helsinki

Thejesh GN — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 16:05:25 +0000

Now that I have got the official name of the workshop let me write about it in detail. I will be attending the inaugural “Open Lab” Workshop at Helsinki. Thanks to Nokia and WomWorld for the invitation and sponsorship. There will be 35 people from all around the world with different backgrounds attending this event. I am not sure about the number of attendees from India.

It’s taking place in September between the 11th and 14th, and will be the first of its kind hosted by Nokia. We’re contacting everyone from creative’s, designers, video producers to open source software bloggers and mobile tech pioneers. There will be a number of workshops that’ll see discussion with participants, and with Nokia guys, about the future of different online arenas and mobile technology. Workshops that we hope you’d like to join in with and make yourself heard.

You know how much I like myself to be heard. Now this is also a great opportunity to meet other bloggers/twitters from all around the world. I hope we will have a tweetup on one of those evenings.

The workshop will revolve around four topics. Neighborhood which will revolve around online communities, social media, networking etc. Connected Life, Entertainment, Work are the other main topics of the workshop.

During the workshop I will also get a chance to try out Nokia E71. Now that I like my eE1i so much; I am very eager to try E71. Wait for my detailed review.

Mean while did a Google search to find other participants of the workshop. I can see Micki, Mike, Nick, Rebecca coming to Open Labs. Who else is joining us?

Nokia e61i - As a Blogger’s Phone

Thejesh GN — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:08:36 +0000

I was thinking about e61i from long time but was still not ready to let go my k750i. Prices at Dubai forced me to buy one. After using for almost four months I am writing this review.

Screen, General Look n feel:
It looks like any other business phone. But it is lighter and slimmer than most of the business phone. It just weights 150gms for 320X240 pixel screen and full keyboard. Its a world phone with qudra band support. It looks good with silver finish at the back and black border in the front. Supports hot swappable MicroSD memory. You need to open the back cover to access MicroSD which is not use friendly.

Keyboard : I wanted QWERTY keyboard and E61i has it. The key board feels nice after two or three days. You can type fast using both thumbs. It has four special keys one each for contacts, menu, mail and configurable ( I have opera mini on it)

Camera: Nothing great just OK. But the video capturing is great. In fact myself and kv have done quite a few YAP episodes using mobile. It is better as video cam than as still camera.

Wireless LAN connection: Wow…Its dead easy to connect to any wifi network.

Audio/Video play back: Video looks good as screen is big. Audio playback is just OK.

Blogger’s Phone? : As a blogger I need big screen, good keyboard, great connectivity, decent multimedia capabilities. E61i excels in all those departments. Only let down is audio recording. E61i can’t record any audio for more than a minute. I have missed many great conversations due to this. Other wise I am a satisfied mobile blogger.

Update: BTW do you know any good audio recording application?

What does “Google Chrome” mean to developers

Thejesh GN — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 06:01:22 +0000

Yet another browser to code for? I guess it will obey ECMA-262 rev3 so don’t worry too much about incompatibilities as of now. Lets see the positive side

Its an open source, you get to participate and allows you to write plug-ins
Each tab is a separate process.so the effect of one tab is not seen in another tab.
Within each tab you have separate thread for JavaScript. So your JavaScript execution will be fast.
JavaScript now runs inside a virtual machine called V8. The JavaScript is compiled to machine code before running. Now that’s an advantage for heavy JavaScript applications like Gmail. Where most of the JS resides on client side and simply gets the JSON from server to show the data. You don’t have to re-interpret the JS every time. Compile once and keep running again and again. Your apps will be super fast now. Now GWT developers don’t have worry about JS performance.
Rendering is by webkit which is again open source.
Looks like they have better garbage collection algorithm for garbage collection. Which will again makes my work simple.
Gears is part of browser now. Your offline apps will have better performance now. Think -> Gears API is loaded as soon as browser is loaded, JavaScript is compiled to m/c code, runs in separate process and thread. What more you want? Your offline application might be as fast as any native application if not faster.

Anything else you want to add.

Eventsbangalore needs your support

Thejesh GN — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:14:52 +0000

I and EventsBangalore have been nominated for the TATA NEN Hottest Startups awards. Brought to you by National Entrepreneurship Network and TATA Group, in association with Helion, Mint , Seedfund and Wadhwani Foundation, it is India’s only community-chosen awards for Indian start-ups.

We at EventsBangalore are trying to build community around the events and citizen of Bangalore.I hope we have been successful to an extent. I know our destination is far. Your vote can inspire us to build better service. Please vote and refer your friends too.

You can visit the url to vote online (you need to register) or you can vote on mobile HOT48 and sms to 56767

I also take this opportunity to announce - new and better EventsBangalore is in the development mode. Its still on my hard-disk. It will be out in a month or two.

Coffee Project Of the Month - S3Fox - S3 Firefox Organizer

Thejesh GN — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:09:06 +0000

Continuing with our monthly series this month’s coffee project is S3Fox - Amazon S3 Firefox Organizer. S3Fox allows you to manage your files on Amazon S3 in a friendly way. The interface is very much like an FTP client which makes it easy to use. You can upload/download/delete files using the interface.

Creating the buxkets and managing the ACL is also very easy. If you use S3 and if you have firefox on desktop thenS3Fox is a must. You can upload the files using drag and drop functionality too (drag n drop doesnt work on my ubuntu). Today if I am happy with S3 then S3Fox is one of the reason.

It has syncronize folder feature which can be used for automatic backup. And you can manage multiple s3 accounts ( like business/personal etc).

S3Fox is developed by SuchiSoft. If you are a happy user of S3Fox go there send them some coffee. Send your comments/feedback/coffee to rjonna at rjonna.com

For UrbanDictionary Fans

Thejesh GN — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:28:16 +0000

Here is the scriplet which you can use to lookup a word on urbandictionary. To use pull the scriptlet onto your URL bar. If you select a word on the page and click the scriptlet takes you the word defnition directly or it will prompt for the word to lookup.

Urban Dict lookup scriptlet