Prakash Advani's Blog

What common between Avtar, King Kong, Lord of the Rings, Fantastic Four, X-Men, i-Robot? They were all created at Weta Digital in New Zealand.

Now some vital stats:

• 2 Petabyte disk array
• 10gbps networking
• 10 TB Ram
• 35,000 cores (4,000+ blades)
• Ubuntu

Here is a nice article posted in New York Times written by a former Microsoft Vice President.

“Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason.

Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation. Despite having one of the largest and best corporate laboratories in the world, and the luxury of not one but three chief technology officers, the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers.”

Microsoft should open source the projects which got killed and will never see the light of the day.

After Google Android, now Symbian has decided to go Open Source. Since Android is Linux based and this had a good chance of Linux becoming the de facto operating system in Cellphone too. So Symbian reacted and released all its source code too, in the hope that their customers don’t switch to Linux and they are able to retain their 46 percent market share in smartphones.

It remains to be seen weather cellphone manufacturers decide to use Linux or continue to use Symbian, however this is great news as Symbian as this will only improve Symbian. Expect stability improvements, as more people can now see the bugs.

Get the code, if you interested. And yes you can use the code to build your own phone without any licensing costs.

Is there still a market for proprietary operating systems? The game is changing and this will create enough competition for Apple/Microsoft to release their code. Show me the code!

Now that the dust has unsettled on the iPad and more anxiety is being generated , I decided to write my two cents.

Apple is known to be an innovative company and they have done exactly that with this device, however they could do better. What they seems to have done is just zoomed up the iPhone , guess Mr. Jobs is getting old .

Apple realised that people liked the iPhone but found the screen size too small, so why not make it bigger while everything else remains the same.  Good strategy because you can use all your iPhone apps, bad one because it still has the limitations of the iPhone.

Here is what I liked:

• Nice 10 inch Screen which is sufficient for most work and entertainment.
• 1024X768 resolution which is decent for all apps.
• Slim .5″ and light weight 1.5 Pounds (700 grams).
• Option for WiFi or 3G (3G may be locked to service providers as this is common Apple Strategy.)
• Huge collection of applications, as all iPhone apps work.
• 10 Hours of Battery life.
• Flash storage (SSD).
• eBook reader, so you can use it as a ebook reading device, however dedicated eBook readers are easier to read because they don’t emit light.
• Orientation sensor, so you can use it vertically or horizontally.

What I don’t like:

• No expandable storage, as there is no memory card slot.
• No USB either so you cant add any peripherals or storage either. You need to purchase additional accessory (Camera Connection Kit).
• No Phone, who would want a 10 inch phone? But we also don’t want to carry so many devices. So phone capablity via bluetooth would be nice.
• No Camera? you got to be kidding. How the hell are we going to use this for our our Skype Videos? Note: Apple has filed a patent for in-screen camera, so this may show up in iPad v2.

Pricing:

This is attractive and offers a good alternative to Netbooks.

Full specifications:

Size and weight

• Height: 9.56 inches (242.8 mm)
• Width: 7.47 inches (189.7 mm)
• Depth: 0.5 inch (13.4 mm)
• Weight: 1.5 pounds (.68 kg) Wi-Fi model; 1.6 pounds (.73 kg) Wi-Fi + 3G model

Display

• 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology
• 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi)
• Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating
• Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously

Wi-Fi model

• Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n)
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology

Wi-Fi + 3G model

• UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz)
• GSM/EDGE (850, 900,1800, 1900 MHz)
• Data only2
• Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n)
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology

Location Service

• Wi-Fi
• Digital compass
• Assisted GPS (Wi-Fi + 3G model)
• Cellular (Wi-Fi + 3G model)

Other features:

• 30-pin Dock connector (same as iPod and iPhone)
• 10-hours of battery life (Over one month standby time)’
• Full capacitive multi-touch interface
• 16-64GB of Flash memory storage
• 1 GHz Apple-branded A4 chip (developed in-house)
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• 802.11n WiFi
• Built-in Speaker
• Built-in Microphone

There is surely a market for devices between a phone and a laptop. The phone has a tiny screen, while the laptop is too big to carry around, so the iPad fills the space well. This will trigger many other OEMs to come up with similar devices, (Dell/HP/Acer are you listening?).  The competition should give us more choices and yes similar functionality can easily be achieved on a Linux platform.

Here is a photo taken during a sunrise in Mumbai. Have fun!

This is awesome News.

Skype is planning to open source its Linux client.

The current Skype client on Linux is functional but buggy and it lags behind the Windows version in terms of features.

Now if Skype opens up, it will make the client development go faster, people will be able to fix bugs faster and add more feature.

Waiting for this to happen.

“There are at least 142 vulnerabilities in IE6, 22 of which are not yet patched.”

Read more.

If you are still using IE, time to switch to Google Crome or Firefox. I have been using Firefox for a while now, find it very good. Off late I have been trying out Crome and find it faster  because most websites today make heavy use javascripts and Crome is fast at rendering them.

I was comparing the pricing of External drives and here are the results. Its Amazing to see how we used to talk in MBs, then GBs and now TBs.

The cost per GB for two 1TB is the same as one 2TB. Unless you need more than 1TB which is a lot, I would buy a 1TB drive and keep the budget for another drive in the future. Who knows by the time you run out of your 1TB, you could get another 2TB a the same price.

The bottle neck will now be the data transfer, USB 2.0 is just not fast enough.. so look for eSATA. Your PC/Notebook should also have an eSATA port. A NAS box with Gigabit Ethernet would also be fast, provided your network card and your network is 1GBps.

Olympus  has launched the E-P2 soon after they launched the E-P1. E-P2 has an electronic view finder which was absent in the E-P1.

Rest of the specs remain more or less the same as the E-p1.

Here is a tip to save time while sending emails using Mozilla Thunderbird.

If you compose an email with Thunderbird, you do not come back to the inbox immediately, unless the email is sent which take a few minutes.

A solution to this is to use the add-on Sendtools. Once you install this, your emails are sent in the background and you are immediately returned back to your inbox.

This also allows you to schedule sending emails at a specific time.

Note: I have tested this with the latest Mozilla 2.0 but sendtools wouldn’t install as it checks for version compatibility and doesn’t install if you have a newer version.

Here is a fix. After you download sendtools, you will find a .XPI file.

Right click on the .XPI, this will open in your archive/zip application.

Now you will see a install.rdf, open this file with any text editor.
Change the max-version to 2.0.*
Save and close the file.
Save and close the archive.

Now install sendtools, it should work correctly.

Two years ago, I said good bye to my lone Desktop. I wasn’t sure how I would survive since I had so many peripherals, but I am doing pretty well so far.  I only use a Notebook these days.

Would I still buy a Notebook or a Netbook would fit the bill? Was just thinking if I were to buy a notebook next, what would I be looking for?

Pre-Installed with  Ubuntu: The last 2 Notebooks I bought, had Windows pre-loaded. I didn’t have an option to buy without Windows, this is a big pain. I am paying for something that I am not using, so why not have a choice? Ubuntu pre-installed notebooks are available, but there is not enough choice. Currently I need to boot into Windows perhaps once in 6 months to update my camera software, only because the application doesn’t have a Linux port. Other than that I don’t need to use Windows.

Good Battery life: This is important, I  can’t survive with just 1-3 hours. I would look for 10 hours of battery life, useful for long flights or go for meetings the whole day without a charge.

GPS built in: This will help in integrating with Google Maps.

3G Built in: With 3G getting very common these days, it makes sense to have the 3G build-in, so you don’t need to carry those dongles.

SD Card slots: these are common these days in Notebooks and Netbooks but now can’t do without them

More USBs: I already have 3 USBs and sometimes find them insufficient specially when I connect external mouse and keyboard.

eSATA: With external 1TB hard drives becoming cheap, the bottle neck to transfer huge amounts of data becomes the USB port. eSATA is about 3 times faster and you can get a hard drive casing with an eSATA port. Make sure your notebook/netbook has an eSATA port too.

LED Monitor: These are nice displays which are easy on the eyes and they have already started showing in laptops. What would be even better is an epaper type reader  that doesn’t hurt the eyes since we spend so much time reading in front of the computer each day.

Good resolution Webcam: these are also common but not all of them are high resolution. With Skype video getting pupular this is nice to have.

Tablet Convertible: I have see a few notebooks which can double up as a tablet, they are a little rough, but nice feature to have. Not sure if I would actually use it alot. But my wants exceed my need.

SSD: Solid State Drives are getting cheaper, they are safe to use in mobile environments and consume less power too.

What about processor speed? Well this is irrelevant today. For basic computing todays processors are fast enough. Most PCs have only 5-10% utilisation so why have this craze for faster processors and hurt the environment? when we can buy small low powered processors?

Netbook or Notebook?
I may invest in a Netbook instead of a Notebook, they are sufficiently powered for my need. Now only if they have a nicer keyboard too.

Making your own herbal tea can be fun and keep you healthy too. Here is Herbal Tea-HOWTO. Herbal teas  boosts your immunity, maintain general good health and can be useful in curing common cold, cough, allergies and indigestion. For best results drink early in the morning.

Ingredients

• 5 Lemon Grass  – Good for Digestion and cold.
• Slice of Ginger root – Generates heat in the body, good for digestion, cold and throat, heart and prevents arthritis.
• 10 mint leaves (pudhina) – good for digestion.
• 5 tulsi leaves (holy basil) – good for immunity and memory.
• 5 whole pepper corns – good for throat and cold.
• Ajwain (thyme) – induces hair growth and provides relief from stomach problems.
• Honey for sweetness – good for throat.
• 1/2 Lemon – rich source of vitamin C. Provides cooling since we are using many hot herbs.
• 1 1/2 cup water.

Optional Ingredients

• Black Cardamom – it is very hot, useful in fighting cold, congestion.

Procedure:

• Wash the lemon grass and mint leaves thoroughly. Cut the lemon grass into smaller pieces for easy handling.
• Mix all the ingredients except the lemon and honey, which will be used later.
• Cover with a lid, Bring to a boil, reduce the flame.
• Boil on low flame for 30 min till it gets reduced to 1 cup.
• Strain, add honey, lemon and serve hot.
• Drink and Enjoy!

I installed AWN Manager on Ubuntu, following the instructions here.

Here is what I liked.

• It looks cool
• Can auto-hide, giving you more desktop real estate.
• Has cool applets like fortune which I enjoy reading and reminds me of bash days.

What I didn’t like

• It crops up when you don’t want it to.
• A little buggy, it doesn’t show when you want it to! and sometimes the icons goes missing, a refreshing of the screen fixing this issue.

If you have a point-and-shoot and long to have more professional features, you don’ t need to buy expensive new cameras yet. You can just enable many new features:

• With this tool, you can enable advance features in any Canon Camera.
• Supports advance features such as RAW support, additional to jpeg. This makes it easy to change white balance and other settings.
• More versatile shutter speeds from 1/60,000 to 34 Min
• You can write your own scripts or use ready scripts for motion detection and other features.
• Live Histogram capabilities allows you manage exposure correctly.
• Completely open source and GPL.
• And yes many other features.

Check the CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) website

My earlier post on this.

Please make sure your camera is supported before you mess with your firmware and yes, this may void your warranty or could make your camera paper weight, so standard disclaimer applies

See some really cool sample images created using this.

1/60,000 shutter speed.

Hummingbird.

Lightning captured using motion sensing.

Nikon has released P90, which is a prosumer camera, featuring functions found in professional cameras. This is a good alternative if you need more than a point-and-shoot but are not yet ready for an SLR.

Many people buy an SLR and then they continue to shoot in auto mode because they don’t know how to use the other features. Or once they start using those features, they don’t have the means to buy all the lenses.

A very good alternative is the Nikon P90, which has several features found in an SLR with the only limitation that you can’t change the lens. The need of which may not arise as the lens included is quite versatile.

What I liked.

• 24X Optical Zoom
• 12Megapixel camera
• Vari-angle LCD
• Image Stabilisation
• 3″ LCD
• 2.8 Aperture
• ISO 64-6400
• Electronic View Finder
• Option of Manual Mode, apart from Program model, Aperture/Shutter priority
• Face detection and Smile mode, automatically releases the shutter when the person smiles.
• Blink warning, warns you if the person has blinked.
• Macro mode
• Li-on battery
• SD Card
• 460g Weight
• Shutter speed upto 8 seconds, wish they had more
  

What I didn’t like:

No RAW mode.

I compared the hardware requirements of a popular Linux Desktop: Ubuntu 9.10 with Windows 7  both of which were released last month.

Ubuntu 9.10 remained a modest 265MB memory with 300MHz computer. Also Ubuntu can run on lesser hardware as well, if you have 128MB Memory, you can still use Xbuntu (a variant), or if you have 64 MB you can use LTSP and run Ubuntu off a central server.

Now Windows 7 demands 1GB Memory with 1GHz computer.

While Windows 7 required 16GB of space to install, Ubuntu can be installed on on less than 4 GB of space.

Some people may argue that hardware is getting cheaper by the day, however there are millions of PCs around in the world which won’t be able to run Windows without an upgrade. If the use Ubuntu, they will save on upgrade costs and hurt the environment less by not having to throw away their old computer.

Some interesting findings: Ubuntu’s hardware requirements has not changed in the last 8 releases over the last 4 years.

Even thought Vista Basic  claimed that it requires 512MB RAM and Vista Business claimed 1GB. Both crawled on 1GB of RAM and required 2GB to run effectively with 15GB of disk space.

Sources:

Ubuntu Release Notes
Windows 7 System requirements.
Windows Vista System requirements.

After all the megapixel race where camera manufacturers were increasing megapixels with each new model, Canon is the first to reduce 14.7 megapixel to 10 megapixel.

I have been saying this all this while, that megapixels don’t matter any more and I am happy that Canon is doing the right thing.

When Canon came up with a new model of G11 which replaces the G10, they decided to reduce the megapixel and improve the image quality. What they found was that while increasing megapixels was making the customer feel that they are getting something better, it wasn’t adding any much value other than increasing the file sizes. In fact it was generating more noise at higher ISOs, resulting in poor photo quality.

Here are some key features of G11, which is a professional quality point-and-shoot. Designed to be as a backup camera for professionals.

• 10 Megapixel camera
• 5X wide-angel optical zoom
• Optical Image stabilisation
• 2.8″ swirl LCD
• Support for RAW
• 2 Stop advantage over G10, due to reduction in megapixel and increasing sensor sensitivity
• VGA Movies
• HDMI connectivity
• Lithium Ion battery
• Built in flash
• SD/SDHC card support

Looks like a good option of you need better photo quality and features, want to move up from a point-and-shoot and are not yet ready for an SLR.

What’s a plug computer?

• Small ARM Based Computer
• Runs Linux and other OS: Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo and FreeBSD
• Consumes just 2  watts of power
• Can be kept always on to run those long nightly downloads such as Torrents
• Can you used for any application that requires an always on computer
• Access through browser or shell
• Has USB, Ethernet and SD Card.
• And yes costs $99

More photos

For more information check plugcomputer.org

Canon has launched a new 18 Megapixel Digital Camera. I don’t know if Megapixel matter anymore unless you are going to print large banners. Anyways here is the specs.

• 18 Megapixel
• 1080p HD Video recording at 30fps
• 8 Frames aper second continuous shooting
• Environmental sealing for those harsh environments: Beaches, Deserts and dusty places.
• Metallic Body
• CF Card (wonder why they didn’t standardise on SD)
• 19 Focal points
• Live View
• Built in Flash and optional external flashes
• HDMI Connectivity
• Weight 820g
• Option for Battery Grip (for extra batteries) or Wireless Grip which can directly upload to an FTP server or even have GPS capabilities.

Advantage over Nikon D300s

• 18 Megapixel vs. 12 Migapixel of Nikon D300s
• Full HD Video 1080p, Nikon D300s only support 720p

Nikon 300s Advantage

• 51 Focal Points vs 19 of Canon 7D
• Dual Card slot: CF and SD, Canon only support CF

Many of us (this includes me , often complain that we don’t have enough money, we don’t earn well, we are poor and so on. This is called poverty thinking cause we may not actually be poor, we just think we are.

Now this statistics may come as a surprise to you.

If your annual income is US$10,000 and you thought you were poor? Think again. You are actually richer than 87 percent of the world population. Now this gets even more interesting.

If your annual income is US$50,000 then you are in the top 1% richest person in the world, better off than 99 percent of the world!

So stop complaining, and start living .

See this site to see how rich you are. This has been blogged earlier.