Opinion: A reminder on why using closed systems is bad

I use a lot of closed systems. In fact, I rely on many of them. To name a few Skype, Windows and now an iPhone. I also use a lot of opensource (including developing my own opensource projects). With open systems (as in with availability of source code), you are always in control and not at the mercy of the initial company that developed it.

So when I heard of Skype discontinuing support for WP7 devices (https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA34489/is-skype-for-windows-phone-7-being-discontinued), it was a reminder how bad this could turn up to be. I had been using a Lumia 800 device for quite some time and actually had no plans to switch until Septemeber, when the official support for WP7 ended. But I switched to another closed system, and iPhone because of a number of reasons: primary one being I just wanted the device to work for me without me tinkering a lot. This is the same reason I use Windows on my home machine. I just have no time to do the tweaking required for open systems to work for me always. But this comes with one major issue such as the one exhibited by the dropping of Skype  on WP7. When I bought into WP7 from Nokia (as they never released the N9 in India), I was quite aware that I was going into a totally closed system, but just ignored it. Lumia 800, started its life without Skype, it came a few months after wards, and now even if the device is in great shape, Skype is altogether dropping support for the device.
I presume that about 2 years down the lane it will be the same issue with my current iPhone: Apple will drop support and force me to upgrade to a new device, even if the device may be in good shape.

That brings me to other question: should I switch to more open systems like Jolla? Probably I should, but then I won't be able to do a tonnes of things that I so easily accomplish on my current iPhone. There is probably a fine balance between open and closed systems. One can't probably choose completely over the other. What is probably still in your hands is that you still have complete control over the data that you store in these devices.

Update: The reactions here (http://community.skype.com/t5/Windows-Phone/Unable-to-login-to-Skype-in-WindowsPhone-7-5/td-p/3437429/page/4?cm_mmc=AFCJ%7C1250_B1-_-10576637-6146953), pretty much sum up my feeling towards how MS has handled its mobile OS strategy. They have simply screwed up.

Travelling only with the Nokia Lumia

I do love to experiment with new gadgets, but I only buy the once that I use primarily to get my work done. So when I got the Lumia, my purpose was to replace my phone, laptop, camera and to some extent the Asus T91 while travelling. Basically I just wanted to have one descent device that has all the functionalities that I need to get my work done.

Office on the go
So I recently travelled to IITK to attend a conference. My first ever software engineering conference. And I enjoyed it, and met quite a few interesting people out there :)
Usually when I go to conferences, I carry my Asus T91 MT along with me. But this time around I wanted to deliberately travel light. So the only device I took with me was the Nokia Lumia 800. On my tablet I usually use OneNote to take down notes and occasionally record interesting talks. This has always worked out great for me. And with a battery life of about 6 hours for the tablet, the thing easily lasts for a day of the conference without any charging cycle.
The Lumia comes with Windows Phone 7.5, whose Office hub did a great job of replacing my tablet for the trip. There is one major difference however: on my tablet I almost never used the on-screen keyboard to take notes, I have always preferred using the pen stylus to actually write down stuff with OneNote. On the Lumia I have to use the on-screen keyboard to key in the notes, the keyboard and the predictive text is pretty good at this job though. So basically all went well for the note taking part. The same was true for the camera. I never missed my DSLR. That, it is another matter that I didn't actually go for any outings. The only photography I did was some at conference and a few more while wandering in the beautiful IITK campus.

Irctc disaster
For the onward journey we could only manage to book a sleeper class ticket. And I had no clue what we were landing ourselves into: people with overloaded luggage, people without tickets, a commercial break after every minute (believe me this was even worse than watching a movie on prime time), and the most spectacular event of one Babloo-bahia jumping of running train and the rest of the family also wanting to execute the superman's act :)
That was more than enough motivation for me and my friend to get a tatkal ticket in AC compartment for the return journey. Believing that Irctc (the railways unit that handles online reservation) has a great mobile site (http://irctc.co.in/mobile), I started the booking process. The Lumia has a nice browser and is fairly easy to use and get the work done. But somewhere in between the reservation process the site decides to totally give up, showing me same screen again and again. At this point I had to call it a day, call up a friend on campus and rush to his room with a loaned cycle from another friend (thanks apr :) ). But by the time I restarted my reservation, all the seats were gone ! And I eventually ended up booking on the next train, but using a Windows laptop.

Email and stuff
This is just cheese. All my accounts (work and personal) just works out of box. The best part is of course the people hub with the goodies of social integration. And with IE9 just about the whole Internet (sans the flash and silverlight crap) is at your finger tips.

Programming?
Yes I enjoy the fact that I can write for the phone on the move using TouchDevelop (https://www.touchdevelop.com/wblh)

Battery life
This is one issue which has been sour spot for many Nokia Lumia users. However, this was never the case of problem with me, even then the good guys at Nokia care replaced my initial unit. I got fairly good battery life on roaming with mobile data (EDGE) switched on. Typically the charge lasted for about 24 hrs, with occasional use of the GPS for sports tracker (went cycling in morning around the IITK campus). I guess, with the latest updates to the firmware, Nokia has addressed most of the issues with battery life.

Note: This post was entirely written on Nokia Lumia using the IE9 browser and the standard blogger interface. Slight editing was then done on my desktop.

Some fun with TouchDevelop and MeTA Studio: scan molecules ;)

Ok so I had some more fun with TouchDevelop. This time a bit serious one ;)

I have been writing a script on my Nokia Lumia using TouchDevelop that allows one to scan a molecule drawing (either using a camera or pre-stored image) and then obtain approximate 2D coordinates with some basic on-device editing. The coordinates can then be emailed to yourself (or ur friends). So now, this script is kind of usable, at least for simple molecule drawings. The script (called omr, fancy optical molecule recognition :) ) can be accessed from: https://www.touchdevelop.com/wdlx. Of course you will need a WP7 device to use this script.

The coordinates obtained can be directly imported in MeTA Studio by using the widget available here: http://code.google.com/p/metastudio/source/browse/trunk/metastudio/widgets/showMoleculeCoord.bsh
Once in MeTA Studio, you know what all can be done :)

[Disclaimer: The script is purely non-commercial, and comes with no support what-so-ever ;)]

Have fun!