Kunal Singh Speaks

Finally I could get Android Early SDK up and running on my Fedora Core-7 Machine.

The process was quite simple. However I had to struggle for a few days, because Fedora install the gnu version of Java and Android requires Java from Sun.

Here are the steps I had to follow:

(1) Install the eclipse IDE (if you do not have it already) with following command:

$> yum install eclipse-jdt eclipse-jdt-sdk (to be done as super user).

(2) now install the Android SDK and ADT plug-in for Eclipse using instructions from this link.

(3) Install the Java from Sun and set it as default by following instructions from this link.

(4) Now you can say Hello to Android as described in this tutorial.

I had an impression so far (from whatever publicity Google has done) that Android is truely open source. In fact I have seen official statements calling Android as open source. Recently I thought of downloading the Android platform code and giving it a shot. But, I could not find any code. When I started to look for the platform code, I could not find it any where.

After some investigation, I came to know that Android is just “Open”. This open could mean anything. However, as of now it does not mean “Open Source” in any way. Google has claimed that they will release the Android source code to developers over a period of time, in pieces. “In pieces” means that they will not be making all the components of Android open source. It will really interesting to watch what all is made open source. For example as of now, only the Linux kernel source is being offered by Android. This is more because Linux Kernel is bound by GPL lincense and as per the GPL license it is mandatory to release the source. Seems very likely that finally Google might release the source code for only those components which are bound by GPL.
Here is an old interview of Rich Miner (the key member of Android team), which I now find very interesting. When asked about the need of Android, Rich commented that, “When we looked at the other [mobile] Linux activities out there, oftentimes they’re initiatives that are based on Linux but their resulting platforms aren’t completely open. Or they’re completely open and they’re Linux”
Now Android is not completely Linux (as Google claims). So Rich’s statement implies that Andorid is completely open. Android is ofcourse not completely open source. So I will be interested to hear from Android team about what exactly this “completely open” means. And how this openness is different from other initiatives like LIMO.

What are Google’s intention with Android?
———————————————-
Well, here is a text from Android website:
“Today, there are 1.5 billion television sets in use around the world. 1 billion people are on the Internet. But nearly 3 billion people have a mobile phone, making it one of the world’s most successful consumer products”.
In wake of above information, it is not tough to guess what Google’s objective with Android is. Their obvious intention is to make a hole in to this big consumer base of 3 billion. Google Apps are already ruling the Desktop world. Google is putting Google Applications and related softwares on Android. If Android clicks, Google can easily get an entry in to a big conumber base.
In order to get a large and free work force of open source developers, to work on Google applications, Google has declared “Android” to be open. Contrary to the claim of being completely open, so far Google has only released a SDK using which Developers can build applications around Android. And next, they have announced a big prize money in various contests (US$ 10 million as of now) for the developers developing their applications on Android. The amount of software which Google can get developed by this 10 million $ plank would be actually worth a few 100 million US$

Here are two cool features which might become common for cell phones, in next couple of years:

Get ready to roll with these smart technologies.

Here is another free and impressive application “OpenProj”; all set to make hole in to MS’s revenues. The “OpenProj” appears to be a great alternative to “MS Project” and other commercially available project management software. Ready to give it a shot?
…
OpenProj crosses 200K downloads

After suffering a big blow its image due to faulty “BL-5C Batteries”, Nokia seems to have landed in another trouble. Company’s decision to shutdown its manufacturing plant in Germany, has sparked strong public ire towards Nokia in the country.

The strong political and government support to the Anti-Nokia movement, might mean a further Erosion of Company’s Image and loss of revenue in Germany (and some other European countries).

Nokia had handled the “BL-5C” issue in a brave and efficient manner. Whereas the company was brave enough to accept the problems with its battery (I guess there was no other way either), it also executed the “battery replacement” program in an effective and efficient manner. I had to just enter my battery details and my postal address on Nokia’s website, and with in a couple of weeks I received a replacement pack through courier.

Will Nokia be able to come out clean once again?

I recently came across this interesting (and lesser known) fact about Optical Discs:

The word disc, in reference to DVD or CD, should be spelled with a c, not a k. The generally accepted rule is that optical discs are spelled with a c, whereas magnetic disks are spelled with a k. For magneto-optical discs, which are a combination of both formats, the word is spelled with c because the discs are read with a laser. The New York Times, after years of head-in-the-sand usage of k for all forms of data storage, revised its manual in 1999 to conform to industry practice. Standards bodies such as ECMA and the International Standards Organization (ISO) persist in spelling it wrong, but what can you expect from bureaucracies? Anyone writing about DVD who spells it as disk instead of disc immediately puts his or her readers on notice that he or she does not understand what he or she is talking about.

< From DVD Demystified >

Are you a software programmer wondering about what is going to be the next trend in field of software programming? If yes, this post might help you to answer some of your questions.

In last few decades we have seen transition of software development process from low level (binary) programming to High level languages (via assembly language programming). The main driving factors which called for change in programming model were increasing complexity of applications. We also realized that just “High Level Language” is not effective for modern applications. A high mismatch between the amount of software which needs to be written and the availability of software programmers( the later is less) calls for highly efficient software development methodologies. This inspired a lot of research on Software Processes and Design Techniques to improve the individual and team efficiencies, which has now matured to a great extent. Now the focus is on “Automatic Code Generation Tools“. Though there are a number of such tools available (for different languages), but it will need a lot more research to make these tools reliable and user friendly.

Coming back to the question of next trend in field of programming. Let us again have a look at what in past inspired changes in programming methodologies. The major driving factor was increasingly complex applications. What enabled the transition from simpler to complex applications? It was availability of complex hardware. We have transitioned a big way from days of 8085. The modern processor might have over a billion of transistors operating on GHz frequencies. So, in order to answer our main question, we first need to figure out, what is the current trend in processor design (this in turn will drive the next trend in programming)

The processing power of a processor depends on two major factors
(a) transistor count - which is a fair indication of processor’s actual power
(b) clocking speed- which tells how many times per second, processor can utilise its raw power. Doubling the clock speed will mean that you can utilize the actual power twice in a second.

VLSI design has reached such a stage where increasing the processor speed further is not possible (as per the current technology). Hence the processor designers are currently focussing solely on increasing the transistor count to increase the processor power. The modern processors contain multiple CPUs - which is the easiest way of multipying the transistor count. Intel’s Dual Core Processor is one of such examples, where a single CPU core is replicated twice on the chip. In next few years we might see multiple of such cores on a single processor chip.

Using a multiple core processor for multi-threaded applications is quite easy. The easiest way will be to run each thread on a given CPU core. But it becomes really difficult for a single threaded application, to utilize the multi-core architectures. Though a lot of domain specific work has been done (in Multimedia and Communications) to disect the commonly used tasks in to parallel independent tasks (which can be run on parallel cores), there is very less scope of parallel algorithm design in traditional PC based applications (e.g. a document editor, mail-box, browser).

Since the applications really can not be easily dissected in parallel, the main focus will be on designing intelligent compilers to utilize the multiple core CPUs efficiently. Compilers will understand the inter-dependency of given instructions and allocate them to different CPUs (as efficiently as possible). But this job can hardly be done with the current programming languages. Compilers will need some constructs in the programs, to understand the integrity of applications and instructions. This could work in two ways - design a completely new language, OR add some construct to the existing languages. Current focus is mainly on the later. There is lot of research being done on this “Parallel Languages” - most of these languages will evolve from C and C++. So, the programming construct in combination with intelligent compilers may drive the efficiency in coming years. Though MS is still suspicious about parallel programming (as it always is with competitors), Intel is heavily funding a number of research projects on parallel programming.

Let us wait and watch.

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Have you ever used voice chat over internet? If you have a PC and an internet connection probably you have. If you have broadband connection, the voice chat quality is comparale to that of a telephone line (may be slightly longer delay but same voice clarity). And you do not pay any extra charges (other than the internet charges). These days PCs are becoming an essential house-hold product. So there is a good chance that most people in cities have a PC at home. DSL connections are also becomign cheaper. Is not there a good chance that Voice Chat over Internet (or Internet Phones) will soon take up a big share of phones.

These days most PCs and mobile phones are bluetooth enabled. Using bluetooth you can communicate between PC and mobile phones. Some compaines have developed softwares which allow users to login to voice messangers from mobile phones. Some companies are even providing the trail version of these softwares for free.

Latest news is that Nokia has added Skype support for some of its models. Soon there may be more and more people migrating to Internet Phones from Cell phones. This will mean another big blow for already struggling Telecom Industry. Let us see what happens.