Prakash Advani's Blog

Here is a short video about Canonical’s cloud offering. This was recorded at Intel Cloud Summit 2011.

The age of technology has ushered in countless conveniences that have shaped our lives in more ways than we can probably even imagine. The late, great Steve Jobs likened technology to a bicycle, in that it helps us get to where we want to go more efficiently. If you want to know how very much technology adds to your quality of life, then try just for a moment to imagine your life without it. Difficult, isn’t it? But just like everything, the benefits of technology come with some costs. Consider these negative effects of technology:

Changes in business. As technology has ushered in all of this convenience, it has also made it unnecessary for people to perform certain menial tasks that computers are now able to accomplish in a fraction of the time. This can be a good thing, unless you’re one of the thousands of people whose job has been replaced by a computer. Moreover, print sources like newspaper and publishers, as well as media retailers like music and video rental stores, are shutting down in large scale because their goods are no longer needed now that people can easily access information and media online.

Intimacy. Technology allows people to communicate with others on a mass scale, and from one corner of the globe to the other. While this may be good in some ways, it also serves to alienate us from true, intimate connections. We have less face-to-face conversations with people in favor of texting via our mobile devices, and we make “friends” with people we’ve never met before, sometimes communicating with them online more than we even spend time with our families.

Laziness and instant gratification. When things come too easy to us – when we no longer have to pay our dues to get a return – we become lazy and complacent. One day, it’s a thrill just to be able to access boundless information on the Internet, and the next day we’re complaining that our pages aren’t loading fast enough. Where does it end?

Technology has made it possible for us to do things we never before could’ve imagined, and it seems we’re only just beginning to understand this fascinating frontier. However, has the advent of the age of technology taken us further away from ourselves? Are we forgetting what’s really important? It seems that today’s culture is, more and more, becoming more about the machine and less about the man. It’s time we take a good, hard look at what we are making of all this technology, before it makes something of us that we no longer recognize.

About the Author: Odette Maupredi is a communications specialist with an avid interest in technology. While she enjoys using email fax services and online sites to better run her business, she is consciously aware of how changing technology is making it more difficult for people to communicate face-to-face.

In the book, Once Upon a Wall Street, Peter Lynch, one of the most successful mutual fund managers that Wall Street has ever seen, narrates a story.

“Consider the Indians of Manhattan, who in 1625 sold all their real estate to a group of immigrants for $24 in trinkets and beads. For 362 years the Indians have been the subjects of cruel jokes because of it – but it turns out that they may have made a better deal than the buyers who got the island. At 8% interest on $24(note: let’s suspend our disbelief and assume they converted the trinkets to cash) compounded over all those years, the Indians would have built up a net worth just short $30 trillion, while the latest tax records from the Borough of Manhattan show the real estate to be worth only $28.1 billion.

That’s 1000 times more! the power of compounding. Found this article interesting.

At the LibreOffice Conference, they announced that they will be releasing versions for Android and iOS.

They also plan to release an online version which you could host on your own as well to offer web based office suite. This would a boon to companies wanting to offer Google Docs but want it hosted in their own private cloud.  They could now host LibreOffice Online.

Expect this to take 12-18 months to release something for end-users. Target date is End 2012 or beginning 2013.

Meanwhile  for Android Users, there are three applications to open ODF files on Android.

OpenOffice Document Reader

ODF Viewer

Mobile Document Viewer

Since the time the HTML standard was created, people have been expecting it to be the defacto standard for application development. While it did help simplify many things, it had its own limitations. To address some of these limitations, Java was created. While Java solved some, it also had its own limitations and required a JVM to be installed on each device. Javascript and AJAX also solved several of those challenges and are still being used widely for rich applications. Although many solutions tried to solve some of these challenges; in terms of rich applications, they were no where compared to client-server based applications which form the bulk of applications that we use today. Flash and Adobe Air were able to fill in the gap as well, by providing a framework for rich application development; however, they’re proprietary and aren’t available on all platforms.

HTML 5, for the first time, has created a standard that provides a rich application development framework that comes close to the client-server experience. Since it’s a browser-based standard, any device with HTML5 capable browsers will support HTML5 applications without the need for additional applications, or plugins.

Here are some of the key benefits of HTML5:

• It’s an open standard, hence there are multiple vendors to compete, which means it’s good for the customer.
• It’s a cross device platform – it works on desktops, laptops, netbooks, phones, tablets, TVs, and others.
• It also works across operating systems: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Ubuntu and other Linux flavors.
• Many browsers already support HTML5 including Chrome, Chromium Firefox, Opera, Android browser and IE will also support it.
• Chrome and Chromium are based on Webkit, which is open source and can be embedded into devices.
• Standardisation also refers to a standard user interface across devices. Many design experts find that Flash-based sites have user interfaces that are very different when compared to traditional browsers. With HTML5 while the interface can still be cool and funky, it need not look very different that a web based application.

Some of the key features of HTML5 are listed below:

Direct support for video

HTML5 has tags for running videos within the browser without the need for Flash or other plugins. This improves video integration and performance. However, your browser needs to support video playback codecs. You can test if your browser supports this by going to http://www.youtube.com/html5. Go to the bottom of the page and click on Join the HTML5 Trial. Now you can see YouTube in HTML5 without using any Flash plugin.
With HTML5, you can also create 2D graphics and drawings. Effectively, using your browser you can draw an image. HTML5 implements vector graphics instead of raster. An advantage of using vector graphics is that the file sizes are smaller as compared to raster graphics (GIF, JPG).
HTML5 also supports offline web application support, so you can run web applications even if you aren’t connected. This is useful for offline email, or other application where connectivity may not always be available.
Drag and drop support

You can now drag files from your computer, into your application and it’ll be installed. You can try this in Gmail, if you have Chrome or Chromium installed on your system.

This article was first published on Digit.

Ubuntu 11.10 is here, The 64-bit version offers multi-arch support, so you can install 32-bit applications and libraries on 64-bit systems.

Other Links:

CD images + Alternative CD.

Ubuntu Core – Just 34 MB ISO of pure Ubuntu.

Have fun

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Steve Jobs

Apple has released the iPhone 4S, here is whats cool.

• Supports both GSM and CDMA can be used across the world.
• Bluetooth 4
• 8 Megapixel camera
• Front camera
• HD Video recording.
• Faster A5 Processor, Better late then never, Android phones are already Dual Core.
• HSDPA support for downloads upto 14.4 Mpbs

The Amazon Kindle Fire has started price war. Since its priced at $199, other similar tablets have to drop prices to stay afloat. Blackberry playbook has already dropped pricing starting at $300. Now HTC flyer is down to $299 from $499, a $200 price drop on Bestbuy. Here is how they compare:

Overall the HTC Flyer looks like a better bet with GPS,  2 cameras, 16GB and expandable memory all fur just a $100 more.  Besides it also has full fledged Android rather than restricted customised Android in the Fire.

Note: Both don’t have 3G. If you need 3G connectivity, look elsewhere. 

Amazon has launched the Kindle Fire, their to be iPad killer. Is is really a killer ? Lets find out.

Here are the key specs:

• 7″ Screen
• Gorilla glass for extra protection
• WiFi
• 8 GB Internal Memory
• Dual Core 1 GHz processor

Whats missing:

• No expandable memory
• No 3G/4G
• No camera