Kunal Singh Speaks

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?
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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 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

If you have a web-mail account and you want to configure Outlook Express, follow the instructions below:

(1) Open the outlook and go to account settings.

(2) Create a new e-mail account - choose type POP3 mail

(3) Enter following settings
(a) Your Name: This can be any name, but makes sense if you enter your own name
(b) E-mail Address: e-mail id
(c) POP3 Server: mail.domain-name.com (e.g. mail.singhkunal.com)
(d) SMTP Server: mail.domain-name.com
(e) User Name: Enter the user name of your web-mail account
(f) Password: Password for web-mail account

(4) After you have finished the above settings, you can use the outlook. In
case you find some problems (more accurately an error message saying ” 550 5.7.1 Unable to relay”) with your outgoing mails (especially with
non-Ingenient mail-ids) go to step-5.

(5) Go to your email account (through tools->account settings) and click on
“More Settings”. Change the following settings:
(a) Select “outgoing server”
(b) Check the check box “My Outgoing Server SMTP Requires
Authentication”
(c) Select “Logon” and give your user-id and password for the
web-mail

You are all set to use the Outlook.

Recently I wanted to download and Install a free “Configuration Management System” with “Graphical User Interface” on my Windows PC. Need was to install both the “Server” and “Client” Softwares. I tried with a few freely available softwares, but could not get them work right. Finally I could find a free trial version of Perforce. It has proved to be very useful for me. This free version of Perforce supports “upto two users and five client workspaces”, which should be good enough for individual work.

Here is a link which gives complete instructions on installation, set up and usage of Perforce:
http://www.perforce.com/perforce/demo/windows/windemo.html

If you know of any other free software and have the complete instructions for installation and set-up, please share here on this blog.

Today, I was struggling to test the sanity of some raw AAC files. These files can not be played using WinAMP/VLC player. One probable way could be to add ADIF or ADTS header to the file. But even that was not seemingly easily, as I could not find much information about the same on web. Given the need of such a tool, I wish some one had provided a free software for same (are there any licensing issues with that?).
Finally, I could find a cool tool called faad @ “http://www.rarewares.org/aac-decoders.php” . This tool can convert a raw AAC file (but not HE-AAC) to ADTS AAC file. Surprisingly I did not have to pass information regarding sampling rate and number of channels, but still the output ADTS file worked fine. The streams which I had to test were 48KHz stereo, I am not sure if this tool takes that as default. But, I am sure that this tool can be helpful for many of us. Going next I will try to write a code which can convert RAW to ADIF.