Showing headlines posted by shantzg001

According to TechCrunch, that is. TC has a post on its blog right now (from none other than Michael Arrington) that says Toddlers Pick iPhone Over Windows 7 Phones 10-1. The article says that this is because a toddlers’ app maker’s notes that their app sold 71.5 apps per day on average on the iOS app store, while the number was 7.5 on the WP7 marketplace. But this article is very misleading. Read on why.

Rovio Mobile has been pretty considerate for the Android lovers and has released their Angry Birds game for free on the Android market. Many people love it but quite a few are annoyed by it because Rovio chose to monetize it by in-game advertisements, and that too placed at awkward places which can hinder the gameplay. So far all the queries about this or pleas to have a paid app have been skirted around by Rovio. But this will soon be history.

Just read an over at zdnet which basically says that Android is a failure for Google because it is open and carriers/OEMs are stripping off google search from it and putting replacements like baidu/Bing. This, for sure, is not the case because Google didn't create android so that it can be the sole owner of it, but something else.

Link: http://tech.shantanugoel.com/2010/10/29/the-real-threat-of-w... Lead: Many say that Windows Phone 7 is a threat to iPhone and many also say that Windows Phone 7 is a threat to Android but I say that Windows Phone 7 is a threat to the world wide web and web apps. It plans to help the developers and users by going one up on fragmentation of Android but in the process will fragment the web app world itself.

Link: http://tech.shantanugoel.com/2010/10/25/android-open-source-... Lead: Is Android really open source or not? That is the question being asked by almost everyone. A lot of people, especially those influenced by RDF or those who are in the news industry with no idea about OS and open source but were asked by their boss to get a scoop on this pronto, tend to bring up a few keywords and then twist them around in the way they see fit to make sure it says Android isn’t open. A lot out of the rest of the people, who are indeed informed, make the mistake of thinking that “Open Source = GPL” or “Open Source = Free Software”, which is not true. I write this post to speak my mind about this matter by talking about various points thrown up by the above mentioned classes

If you have come across a tutorial or just someone on a forum who tells you to install something in Debian/Ubuntu that involves using apt-get, it is ok for you but when they tell you that you need to use a caret symbol (^) at the end, that’s where you become curious. What is even more weird is that when you search for the name of the package that the given command seems to install cannot be found using apt-cache search. e.g. You will see this used most often when someone tells you how to install LAMP server.

Yes! As of today noon, paid apps are now visible on my Android Nexus One in India. Noting down a few salient points about this which includes some more worldwide marketplace changes. Also, look at the end to see how to get paid apps if you are not able to see them yet.

Seems like there is a major problem going on with WordPress.com and it’s stats plugin right now. On logging into your WordPress blog, instead of seeing the pretty charts and stats, you will see a login box instead. On logging in, it just redirects back to the same thing again

We heard the news today that paid apps in Android market place have been extended to 18 new countries. Could “Carrier Billing” (Allowing your service operator to add the apps’ price to your cellphone bill) be the reason behind it? I think so and this is a GOOD thing.

Just got a mail from Google that paid apps are being made available in India. HOORAY!!! In addition, developers from 20 more countries can sell apps on market (Unfortunately, no India in this list) and people from 18 more countries can buy paid apps. This is a big thing because now 32 countries out of 44 where Android has footprint can buy paid apps. This should take away one of the biggest drawbacks that Android marketplace was facing.

I wanted to record calls on my Android phone (Nexus one). The easy way would have been to download an app but I like tinkering. And given that I recently bought Tasker, android’s very own swiss knife, I thought I should give it a run. After just an hour I was able to create my very own call recorder (some time went into trial and error with things as this was my first major task with tasker and also some things didn’t work with nexus one, which I will note below). I’ll outline the process to set it up here in as much detail as possible and will also provide the profiles. Please note that I made this setup for nexus one but it should work on pretty much any android phone

An application review process was announced today for getting your apps into Ubuntu “extras” repository. But like most other announcements of new things, this one was met as well with as much criticism as the praise it got. A lot of the criticism is FUD though, although mostly unintentional and caused by ignorance of some facts behind it. I’ll try to address some of these concerns here to the best of my knowledge from what I’ve been reading over the past some time about this development.

Another nail in the coffin before this Android tablet lives to fulfill the Indian kids’ dreams. Well, not exactly a nail in the coffin. The tablet might still be here, and at the price promised but the thing to note is how low the government can stoop to get bragging rights (and votes). The article elaborates how the IIT/IISC scientists weren’t even aware that such a “project” existed and they were invited to be a part of it just a month before Mr. Kapil Sibal unveiled the epitome of Indian innovation to the world media

Just read this over at the Android Developers google forum: "My app had a one-day sale on all platforms and app stores. The price went from 2.99 to free for just today, but now that the sale is over, I need to revert the price back to 2.99. The bad news is, the developer console will not let me change it! I have to pull the app until I can get this resolved. What can I do?" The Android Developer's agreement's clause 3.3 explains this but not so clearly.

There has been a spate of security reports recently about Android apps being malware or suspicious. Most of these were found baseless but at least one was indeed correct (e.g. The Russian Trojan app). We also know that Android has a very good security model but even then, the rest of the reports also makes one think and focus on why an apps requires the permissions that it states it needs?

Ever wanted to set video as your desktop wallpaper a la the quickly-ditched Windows DreamScene? With 'Video Wallpaper' it's easy. By using Video Wallpaper you will be forfeiting the ability to use the 'desktop' as normal - no icons, files etc will show. Any drop shadows present on panels will also disappear. If you're tuff enuff to cope, here's how...

Many Android Developers (and users) get confused that why a certain app isn’t showing up on the new Xperia X10 Mini (and few other) phones. This happens even if they support all android versions and have published their apps for all countries, so that shouldn’t be the issue. I came across this as well when few people mentioned that they couldn’t find my app Wi-Fi Keep Alive in the X10 mini marketplace. On some digging into the android docs and the X10 mini specs, I found the issue and here is the solution

If you want to have a secure browsing environment or just want to access your home network securely without exposing extra services to the internet and without the mess that comes with setting up and maintaining a VPN server, ssh tunneling is your rescuer. This post will tell you how to setup an ssh tunnel to your home network easily step-by-step.

We all know that Android does not allow the camera LED to be controlled directly from apps and hence, you cannot use the camera LED as a Torch or Flashlight unless you are rooted. There are many flashlight apps on the Android Market Place but none of them will work for you if you don’t have a rooted phone. BUT this changed recently

Skype on linux works great but the problem that I faced was that it does not handle the buttons on the bluetooth headsets. My wife uses skype to call into her work related conference calls and was pretty frustrated that she had to keep sitting in front of my laptop (her laptop didn’t allow to install skype) just to switch mute on and off. So, I whipped up this little trick to do so.