Prakash Advani’s Blog

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

-Albert Einstein

The much awaited Ubuntu 8.04 aka Hardy is finally released. Go ahead and download using your favourate bittorrent client.

Torrent links for Ubuntu.

Torrent is the most efficient way to download as it doesn’t depend on the infrastructure of the central server and each download PC also becomes a host.

If you don’t already have a torrent client and want to quickly get started, try µTorrent the smallest Bittorrent client (just 214KB) .

Now first thank you Hyundai for launching the i10 first in India. In fact the car is also completely designed in India and manufactured too. What this means is that the customer in India gets a world class product.

Whats good:

Looks good, better than most hatchbacks in the same category.

Its a 1.1 engine which it shares with the Santro and the Getz Prime 1.1.

It has tubeless tyres. Now its easy to get tubeless types repaired and they are convenient so you don’t get stuck in the middle of the highway with a flat tyre.

Option of sunroof, not much use when its hot, but some people fancy it.

Motor Driven Power Steering, better than Santros Hydraulic Power Steering.

Tilt Steering: You can adjust the steering wheel. A boon for tall/well built people.

Good driver legroom.

High scores on safety:

Option for ABS and airbags.

Whats Not good:
Front seat headrests are not adjustable.

No high seating like the Santro, which is a boon to people with knee problems.

Safety features: Airbags and ABS are optional, why not make them standard?

Now the car didn’t take away all the awards just like that? It was the Car of the Year of most of the Auto magazines in India. Its likely to replace the Santro at some point of time but Santro buyers/users need not worry. From what I have heard, the sales of Santro is very good today and is not likely to be discontinued anytime soon.

Related Articles:

Tata Nano: 1 Lakh Rupees ($2500) Car

Hyundai Verna - First Look

Maruti Suzuki Swift Vs. Hyundai Getz

Honda Jazz coming to India

Hyundai Santro Vs. Maruti Suzuki Wagon-R

After hitting the 500 million download milestone, here is another feather in the cap for Firefox.

Mozilla Firefox’s share of the enterprise desktop market has reached 18 percent, according to a new Forrester report.

Read more.

Interesting quote from Michael Dell in his book Direct from Dell.

“Sometimes it better not to ask-or to listen-when people tell you something can’t be done. I didn’t ask for permission or approval. I just went ahead and did it.”

India is soon going to be the second largest mobile market in the world ahead of the United States.

Currently India has 250 million mobile subscribers as per last count and will be 300 million by end of April 2008.

US has 260 million and China is at 550 million.

Way to go!

Read More.

There are a lot of good reasons for moving to Linux on the desktop, primary amongst them that is is more secure, it doesn’t have the virus problems that Windows has and of course you can save tons of money on licenses.For the IT department, once a Linux system is set up, it is very easy to manage and requires very little maintenance. Many IT administrator have found that they never have to attend to a Linux desktop, or reformat the machine every couple of months, or spend sleepless nights cleaning the viruses and wiping spyware.

But before you make the move, here are a few suggestions on the best practices to be followed before moving to Linux on the desktop.

1. If you are already using Microsoft Office, consider switching to open source applications on Windows first . For example, if people primarily need an Office Suite move to OpenOffice on Windows and then to OpenOffice on Linux. This will make the transition a lot easier when you move to Linux because users have more resistance while moving away from their favourite applications. They are attached to their favour Excel macro, Outlook short-cut or even their favourite game of Solitaire. Fortunately OpenOffice can run their Excel macros and provide a familiar look and feel.

Organisations have already saved a fortune by moving to OpenOffice alone. Ninety percent of users in any organisation need only ten percent of the functionality and OpenOffice today has most of the functionality an average user would use and a lot more. In fact today OpenOffice has many nice features such as export to PDF, native support for OpenDoc Format (ODF) and support for Microsoft file formats. It can also export presentations to Macromedia Flash.

In addition to the office suite, Mozilla Firefox is an excellent browser. It is the fastest growing browser, it is secure and there are lots of extensions with which you can enhance the browser for your requirements. Removing the fees for MS Office in your company and introducing open source applications is a great way to break down resistance in organisations to making the leap to Linux on the desktop.

See below for Some Open Source alternatives to popular applications

Windows Applications	Open Source Alternatives (These run on Both Windows and Linux)
MS Office	OpenOffice.org
Outlook Express	Mozilla Thunderbird
Internet Explorer	Mozilla Firefox
Photoshop	Gimp
MSN/Yahoo Messenger/ICQ Chat Client	Pidgin
Windows Media Player	VLC Media Player

2. If you are investing in new computers for new users or applications. This is good time to start directly with Linux. Particularly fixed function workstations which are only running 1-2 applications such as POS terminals, Data Entry machine, call center PCs, etc. Eliminating paying for a fullWindows license for a fixed function is an easy justifications for moving to a Linux desktop in your business.
3. A low impact way of persuading key people in the organisation to consider Linux is to ‘dual boot’ their windows machine with Linux. This is a very simple process usually and at start-up the user can choose which operating system to use. Very often, there will be some key hold-outs in any company who advocate no change. Increasing their familiarity with Linux, reassuring them that it works on standard machines and that it is compatible with their peripherals will go a long way to making the switch to Linux easier. It also offers them the reassurance of switching back to Windows should the decision not be made to go with Linux
4. Change your IT policy! When buying new applications, computers or peripherals ensure that you buy products that work well with Linux. This protects you in the future. When tomorrow you move to Linux, you aren’t stuck with legacy applications which can’t be ported.
5. And last but not the least. Invest some of the savings that you get from the licenses into training and support. This will ensure that users are more comfortable and they have access to expert support to rely on

“The HAPPIEST people DONOT necessarily have the BEST of all.
They simply APPRECIATE what they find on their way.”

What happens when a relatively small company launches a low cost notebook? A device that doesn’t do everything but does all the basic computing: email,browsing and wordprocessing and is available at half the cost!

From this article:
Sony: “If (the Eee PC from) Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble.”

You better be . Its high time customers stop paying a thousand dollars for typing emails, which be done as well on a $100 PC running Linux.

Eeepc Website

The excellent Mozilla Firefox browser now had more than 500 million downloads! Thats excellent news and is perhaps the most popular open source application even more than Linux!

Join the celebrations:

 In honor of the 500 million download mark we’re celebrating by raising 500,000,000 grains of rice in one day to help feed the world’s poor. Since we have reached the milestone, it is time to flock to freerice.com and attempt to push the days total over 1/2 billion. This is just a foreshadow to where one day Firefox will be. Food for thought, uh, better yet, Food for Lives; if we reach 500 million grains of rice, that’s a direct contribution in feeding 25,000 people for one day! Donate now, http://freerice.com

Now if only all the Indian sites can be Firefox compatible:

Related posts:

Firefox tweaks

Firefox now has 25% browser market share

Protecting yourself from phishing sites

Another reason to use Mozilla Firefox as the browser.

Freedom from Ads

“If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions, I should point to India.”

Max Mueller, German scholar.

HP Photosmart C4388 - Multifunction Device - Printer/Scanner/Copier

Configuring this with wireless printing and scanning Ubuntu Linux 7.10

Whats good about this printer:

Wireless Printing: So your printer/scanner need not to be physically connected to the PC/Laptop and can be anywhere on the Network.

Memory Card Reader: Remove your memory card from your digital camera, insert into the printer and print your photos directly.

LCD Display: It has a nice LCD display which displays the status.

Photo quality: The printer is designed to print photo quality prints, I haven’t compared the quality, but its a nice feature to have

Flat bed scanner: So you can scan documents and books.

Copier: You can take photocopies without using a computer. Directly like a photocopy machine.

What I don’t like:

Single colour cartridge: No separate cartridge for each colour so you need to replace the whole cartridge even if you run out of one colour. What a waste!

Also be careful when you run the printer for the first time. It takes a test print and asks you to scan the page. If you don’t wait for the ink to dry up, your scanner will have ink smudged all over! Wonder why don’t ask you to wait.

Now the meat:

Note: Please read the section on HPLIP below, before you start.

Configuring the printer on Ubuntu is a breeze. Just plug in the USB cable and the printer gets detected and configured. It uses the C4200 drivers which work fine.

To configure wireless, you need to run the setup utility the first time on Windows. This will activate the wireless printing.

Once that is done, from Linux, change the print port from USB to jetdirect and give the IP address. The printer IP address can be found through the router. Once you know the IP, just ping to check if its accessible.

If you can’t figure out the IP, you can force your router to assign a specific IP address to the MAC address and then use that IP address.

If I look into /etc/cups/printers.conf this is what I see:

DeviceURI hp:/net/Photosmart_C4380_series?ip=192.168.0.11

Where 192.168.0.11 is the Printer IP address.

HPLIP

To get the scanner working. I had to install the HP utility from HPLIP Site. This was a bit tricky to install. When it was trying to install the necessary packages, it gave me some strange errors.

Package install command failed with error: 100

To fix that I had to manually install the required packages and then it worked fine.

This utility also doesn’t work with the drivers bundled with Ubuntu and those drivers needs to be uninstalled.

Once this was installed, I was able to print and scan wirelessly!

To scan use xsane or xscanimage

Also refer to this article for more information.

Like this one:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by, and
that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Nice article:

15 Ways to Declutter your mind.

From Robert Kyosaki’s book: Rich Dad Poor Dad.

Found it very inspiring:

Most of the time , life does not talk to you. It just sort of pushes you around. Each push is life saying, “Wake up. There’s something I want you to learn.”

If you learn life’s lesson, you will do well. If not, life will just continue to push you around. People do two things. Some just let life push them around. Others get angry and push back. But they push back against their boss, or their job, or their husband or wife. They do not know it’s life that’s pushing.”

Life pushes all of us around. Some give up. Others fight. A few learn the lesson and move on. They welcome life pushing them around. To these few people, it means they need and want to learn something. They learn and move on. Most quit, and a few like you fight.

“What we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon. Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours: Which do we want more of?”

Read this very good article.

“India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border.”

Hu Shih, former Ambassador of China to USA

When was the last time you dated a woman who was nice and sexy and at the same time intelligent too? Welcome to the iPhone. Steve Jobs magic is working.

The iPhone is not only a sexy phone but extremely intelligent. Once you use it, you would find other phones are so dumb!

I tried a Windows mobile phone. While talking it would blank out the screen. Which is a good way to save power but…. during a call if I had to wake up the screen, I had to tap the screen. While doing that, some other button would get accidently activated and the call would get disconnected or go on hold.

Similarly on many touch screen phones, you would find that while talking, when the ear touches the screen, it activates some button that you didn’t wanted it to.

How does iPhone manage this? It has a proximity sensor. The proximity sensor switches off the touch screen when you take the phone close to your ear, and turns it back on when you take it off. Simple technology but extremely practical.

The iPhone interface is also the best I have seen. Very easy to use and intuitive. It hides all the complexity that a normal user wouldn’t use.

What Apple is missing in the iPhone that they are not trying to make it a replacement for a computer. It still requires the computer and iTunes to sync music, pod casts, etc. You also can’t sync your address book with Yahoo or Gmail directly, this again requires iTunes.

What more I like about the iPhone:

• Good battery life, goes on for 2 days on moderate use.
• Good sound quality through speakers and the headphone. The sound volume is good for music. However the volume is low for the phone and the speaker phone even after when the volume is on full. Didn’t figure out that one!
• Excellent screen resolution and good video playback.
• Conferencing facility works well.
• Email works well, I tried IMAP and Gmail.
• EDGE works well and it switches to WiFi whenever available.
• No crash. It has never crashed on me. It does get slow at times, when you load up too many applications but never had a crash. This is amazing considering how many times a Windows Mobile phone crashes.
• Also the operating system response is fast.
• WiFi works well and the Safari browser works well.
• Very attractively prices at US$ 399 in US. Hope they can maintain the same price in the rest of the world.

Now what I don’t like about the phone:

• Very very proprietary. Everything is proprietary and it feels like your locked into Apple for life.
• You can’t use it to connect your computer to the internet using the iPhones EDGE/GPRS service. Apparently this is again locked by Apple. There are sites that explain you how to do that in a round about way. But that’s a little complex for an average Joe user.
• You can’t edit emails once they are in the outbox but not yet sent.
• No option to send electronic business cards like Palm, Nokia and other cellphones.
• Once you sync your music/video from one computer, you can’t sync with another computer. If you do that you will lose all your music and videos. This may have been done to prevent people from sharing music but its a big pain for the average use. I feel every more sorry for Windows uses, who need to re-format their computer every couple of months. They better have backups of their iTunes.
• The phone does get a bit hot when used. Its still doesn’t get as hot as a Nokia but still its irritating.
• No expandable memory, which means you cant add more memory. With 8GB and now 16GB phones, they may not be required by most uses, but why live with a limitation?
• Camera is good but only 2 megapixel. No flash or zoom or any other camera features such as scene modes.
• No camera in the front which is required for video conferencing.
• Regular head phones jack doesn’t work. You need only an iPhone jack. Proprietary!!!
• It has excellent maps but no GPS.
• If you face a problem with the battery, replacing battery is a rocket science! Its not as easy as the other phones where you can just change the battery.
• No video recording so you can’t make some fancy home videos
• No timer for Silent mode. I like this feature in my Nokia phone, when I go for a meeting for say 2 hours, I can put the silent profile which expires in 2 hours. So after 2 hours the phone switches off the silent profile. In iPhone, you will have to manually switch it back.
• Big problem with recognising Numbers. If I have a number saved as 55555 without the country code and the caller ID send the number with +15555 (country code), it won’t understand. Nokia does this very well and that’s a limitation of the iPhone.
• Couldn’t find a way to synchronise your calendar with any other web service. Would have liked if it could sync with Google Calendar.
• No PDF reader, Adobe Acrobat! Apparently Adobe asked $2 per device as license fees and Steve Jobs said FO! So we get F$%#.
• No TV out cable included. So if you want the watch the videos on TV you can’t right do it out of the box. You need to buy a cable from Apple which cost $49.

The iPhone’s SMS is very poor, perhaps because SMS is not big in the US but it surely is in India and other countries. Hope Apple fixes it before they want to sell it to Europe and Asia.

• No MMS.
• No SMS forwarding. Not a big deal, there are third party applications that allow you to do that but it would be nice if Apple included that by default.
• SMS with special characters. These are alerts are sent by Banks/Airlines. They show as garbled on the iPhone.
• No option for sending group SMS.

Conclusion:

For me the iPhone is the smartest device I have ever used. And if you don’t mind some of the limitations mentioned about, its definitely worthy the try.

PS: If Steve Jobs is reading this, good work! But keep it open

Read Earlier post:

Why wait to buy the iPhone

Tata has gone where no other car company has gone before. They have release the cheapest car in the World.

This car has huge potential to provide basic automobile to the 3rd world countries at an affordable cost.

Vital Stats:

Engine: The three cylinder 624 cc four stroke petrol to develop 33 bhp.

Mileage: 50 miles to the gallon or 20 kilometres to the litre.

Some pics..

See more.

Related articles:

Hyundai i10

Hyundai Verna - First Look

Maruti Suzuki Swift Vs. Hyundai Getz

Honda Jazz coming to India

Hyundai Santro Vs. Maruti Suzuki Wagon-R

When men were men and wrote their own device drivers - Linus Torvalds

Here are all the photos of the men

Kernel Summit 2007 group photo