Forgotten art: Microsoft Origami for Tablet PCs

Lately have been using my Asus T91 MT a bit too frequently, primary to write documents and occasionally to browse the web. Though I  constantly use the tablet, I hardly thought of two things: faster way to login my machine and better touch friendly window title bar and scroll bars. The rest of the elements in Windows 7 appear to be quite touch friendly to me, but not the above mentioned ones.

During the previous iteration of Windows, Microsoft had released a set of tools called Origami. These tools were specifically meant for touch based UMPC tablet PCs. Two of the tools offered by Microsoft Origami: picture password and touch settings have made a pleasant difference to how I use my tablet PC. You can download Microsoft Origami from here. But note that you may not be able to use other Origami tools on Windows 7 except the ones that I have mentioned. With Asus releasing the "most powerful TabletPC on earth" , probably its time to revive origami for Windows7.

New MeTA Studio icon

Its been long time since there was a public update for MeTA Studio, partly because there is been lot of behind the scene re-architecting going on. And partly because I have been caught up with other stuff.

Even as a number of features were added for MeTA Studio, its icon had never clanged to reflect the new changes. The current icon is a simple rendering of a macro molecule, with the original intent of MeTA Studio being ease of handling large molecules:

Starting with today, the SVN has a new icon originally designed by APR.

The main site also hosts a logo as shown above. The above icon is basically designed with the four core foundations of MeTA Studio in mind: Organize (molecules) , Visualize, Code and Collaborate.

Look back at this space as we prepare to release updates to MeTA Studio in coming weeks.

Motorola Atrix: super phone with a promise

In a recent post, I had argued for a super phone Software interface that:
"Ideally I would like my smartphone OS to automatically scale its user interface form small portable screen to a large desktop scale screen, handle touch, pen and pointing as well as keyboard, seamlessly. That will make computing on the go painless and computing on desk seamless. You will always need only one device: your personal super phone."

With the release of Atrix, Motorola seems to be heading in exactly this direction. Probably a way to acheive this on a phone is via virtualization. That, I guess is how   Motorola is implementing it. With the ever improving ARM SoC capabilities and recent announcement of Windows for ARM, we are soon approaching:

"Three screens, One brain and the Cloud"

mantra. One who gets this right will define the next revolution in computing technologies.

Notion Ink: Good startings

Almost an year ago I started following Notion Ink (http://tovganesh.blogspot.com/2010/01/notion-ink-another-attempt-at-making.html). One thing I was pretty critical about the device then was the software stack, just what sets them apart from other android tablet efforts?

Now with pretty positive reviews from Engadget (Joanna Stern), Liliputing (Brad Linder) at CES'11, I must say that Rohan Shravan and team have pulled up quite well. Good beginnings Rohan et al., though there is still lots to be done ;)

Mypaint: An open source painting application

For some time now I have been searching for a good, responsive, free and professional digital painting tool for my Asus T91 and the bamboo tablet (pc). Today I discovered Mypaint (http://mypaint.intilinux.com/) which is an excellent tool for professional digital painting. Best of all it is open source and simply works. The program can also be configured for pressure sensitivity (provided the hardware supports this) and thus provides most natural painting experience. Highly recommended even if painting is just a hobby for you (like me ;-))

When can I have my Personal SuperPhone (PS) ?

There is no doubt that Personal Computers (PCs), and the mobile phones have revolutionized our lives in multiple meaningful ways. Now smartphones are redefining the way mobile computing is done. But a smartphone today, be it from any vendor, can hardly be called personal the way PCs are.

A PC allowed you to customize from top to bottom. Every thing in a PC can be upgraded or swapped out in case a particular part malfunctions. I have a host of choices of what software stack I want to run on it. Right from the operating system to the applications are customizable. And it has been so form day one.

Not in case of a smartphone. True, yon can install some apps on them. True you can increase some storage space on some of them. May be change wallpaper to make it appear "personal". But that is it. It is what I call "pseudo-personal". You have no standard way of choosing a different operating system. You can buy different hardware for different mobile operating systems. But yon can't use the same hardware for different OSes even though they might be capable of doing so.

There is no way to fully customize software stack. Hardware wise it is even more restrictive. There is simply no way to expand or add capabilities. Though one might argue that you can put something like a USB host port. But none of the major phone makers have that feature. Currently I am using an Android phone (previously a Nokia Symbian). None of them have an easy way to install or upgrade the OS. My Android device is still 2.1, new 3.0 is round  the corner. There is no way to upgrade the RAM or phone memory. You upgrade external storage, but that is too limiting and only useful as a way to store data. Thinking back, my first PC was an HP machine with AMD processor. It only came with 64 MB RAM which I later upgraded to 343 MB, upgraded from Windows 98 to XP, dual booted with numerous flavours of Linux, installed BeOS!, installed graphics card and what not. That freedom is missing completely in a smartphone available today.

 

Capable closed hardware, crappy software

Today's smartphone hardware is no doubt very capable. But is closed. Closed to the extent that even if you manage to open up your device you will have difficulty in identifying the essential components that make up the phone. The only parts that you could mange to remove would be the battery pack and the display panel. Possibly a key pad if your smartphone does come with one. Don't ever think of interchanging these parts with another phone: it would almost never work. Simply because there are no prevailing "Standard" as in the case of PC.

On the other side, software on these devices  is not really productive. The PC software has matured over years, to the extent that people have started calling it legacy. Note that I consider all cloud based applications (aka. web appps) to be actually tailored for PC usage, not for ultra portable device.  Eventually the productivity offered by these smart devices is but quite limited. You almost always fall back to your PC to do the actual work (why do yon think Google is releasing ChromeOS?). The phones do not truly and transparently sync with your workflow. To some extent this has improved especially with mobile e-mail clients. But not in general. Ideally I would like my smartphone OS to automatically scale its user interface form small portable screen to a large desktop scale screen, handle touch, pen and pointing as well as keyboard, seamlessly. That will make computing on the go painless and computing on desk seamless. You will always need only one device: your personal super phone.

 

More eco-friendly

Another important factor of these smartphones is battery. My E51 used to last for at least 3 days on a single charge. My current Android phone only lasts a day. Difference being that I am using a lot more data services than I did with E51. I would actually love if the phone operated on solar power when on move and on battery when on desk.

 

From Asia not America

A noted company has to take initiative and came up with a reference design for a personal Super phone: Like the IBM PC. That, this would rather happen in some part of Asia and not America is my hunch.

A reference design like Open Moko is a good starting point.

Update: Motorola just released an interesting superphone: http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/06/motorola-atrix-4g-hd-multimedia-dock-and-laptop-dock-hands-on/

some fun with C++

Was playing around with C++, and found that you can actually use a base class member function pointer to call functions defined in derived class. Round about way, but useful for implementing stuff like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_%28programming%29

Here is an example snippet:

#include ... 
class Base { 
  public: 
    typedef void (Base::*WhoPtr)(); 
}; 
class D1: public Base { 
  public: 
    void WhoAmI() const; 
}; 
class D2: public Base { 
  public: 
    void WhoAmI() const; 
}; 
void D1::WhoAmI() const { 
  std::cout << "I am D1" << std::endl; 
} 
void D2::WhoAmI() const { 
  std::cout << "I am D2" << std::endl; 
} 
void run(Base::WhoPtr fptr) {
  Base base;   
  (base.*fptr)();  
}
int main(int argc, char **argv ) { 
  Base::WhoPtr func; 
  func = (void (Base::*)()) &D1::WhoAmI;
  run(func);
  func = (void (Base::*)()) &D2::WhoAmI;
  run(func);
  return 0; 
} 

(Un) Portables :-)

Droided

Just a test post from my android phone. Essentially meaning I jumped platform boat from symbian.

The phone is Samsung Galaxy 5, and is probably the cheapest and most feature rich android phone available in India. And turns out that it is even cheaper and more useful than my 3 year old nokia e51. Except that there is no skype on this phone... Yet.

Update: And Skype just released an update for Android (http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/get-skype/on-your-mobile/skype-mobile/android/), which works great on my phone (audio only at the moment) :)

Location : Atmanand Park, Clover Park, Viman Nagar, Pune, Maharashtra,

Remembering Fractal Geometry creator: Mandelbrot

Benoît B. Mandelbrot, most famous for the Mandelbort set, which so oftern is one of the first few and cool assignments for many graphics and fractal geometry introductory courses has recently passed away. NYT remembers him and his work (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/us/17mandelbrot.html?_r=2).

I believe them, they don’t ;-)

Ok. I had to express my anguish, so the post!

From childhood, I have stayed near the airforce colony. Was educated in Air Force school I which is inside the airforce colony. And have frequented to the temple there. Only in the last visit to home, I had been to my School with a friend of mine. No issues. But this time when I wanted to go with my uncle to the temple inside there they asked me for an ID card!! And they made me go home and fetch one. Made me feel: I believe they don't. Only then I remembered the reason for this paranoid behaviour: Pune had an unfortunate incidence of terror early this year and 'they were not taking any chances.' 

Back to home: A journalist, a seaman and a jockey

The journey back home has always been exciting. When taking a flight to or from Mumbai, I usually take KK Travels as a pickup service. They usually have Tavera or a similar four-wheel-drive and are confortable and fast.

Typically there would be 2 to 3 co passengers along with you , and is usually interesting to talk to these "strangers". Of all the time I have travelled with this pickup service, my co-passengers were largely IT professionals. Never found someone with research background or something else.

This time around, I was for some different treat :)

All started at Sydney airport when someone behind me told that my backpack zip was open. He said not worry and closed it for me. Probably he pitied on me as I was carrying 3 handbags :) After conversation with him, he told me that he is a Malayalee working with The Australian as a journalist. He and his wife were both Oz citizens and had voted for the elections just before boarding the flight. For me I was quite pleased to meet a journalist working with The Australian, which was the only sensible newspaper I found during my stay in Oz. In the end a thought crossed me: wish it was so uncomplicated to vote in India.

Next, two interesting people a seaman and jockey made the journey back to Pune fun. This time around the cab driver also did not drive like the world was coming to an end. So it turned out to be an extraordinary smooth ride.

The seaman guy seemed to have traveled the world over in the past 8 or so years he has been working with a shipping company. Being a "demanding " job, and probably pretty-highly payed (>8k $) he is fine with working 6 months or even less a year. And says will 'retire' in couple of more years. Of all the chattering he was doing one statement stood out 'I have seen the world, much closes than you have, at-times fascinating, at times pathetic, but it is only when I come to Bharat that I feel peace. There is no better place to live than India. '

The jockey was another interesting guy. I have never imagined before that a jockey was actually a sort after profession. Unlike most of the people going out of India to work, where they live in the urban world, this guy lives near a countryside stable north to London. Unlike the seaman, this guy had pretty less grab an English, and most of our conversation was in Hindi/ Marathi. This guy too had some general opinions, one that I vividly remember was 'Indians are the most cultured and caring while English are the most fit'.

Between us we had a healthy talk on wide variety of subjects during the three hour journey. At times I was stunned by the kind of questions these guys asked me. In the end thought, I felt that experience and maturity shapes a persons viewpoint towards life and others in general.

Moving on..

Long time since I posted on my blog! Mostly because I have been pretty busy with preparations to move on.. Yes will be taking up a new position at http://www.vlifesciences.com/ from next Monday.

So just wanted to update on a few things which have kept me engaged:

- Moving is not exactly pleasant, especially if you had not anticipated it and you have too many stuff to get rid of!

- Keeping track of NotionInk Adam, but lost a bit of touch with them due to the above!

- Trying to finish up my current work.

- Getting my thesis published as a monograph :-)


- Best of all : Roaming around on Oz land :) Hope to post in some photos..

Finally, what happens to my existing opensource contributions?

- In one line: there should be no difference, I would continue to contribute and maintain the codes during my free time. All the current licenses will be maintained.

- For MeTAStudio : I would continue to update and add new features to this project. There are also a number other contributors now, whom I guess will continue their contribution as usual.

- For codes developed at ANU:
A part of my work involved writing codes for performing Hartree-Fock calculation on molecular systems using X10 programming language being developed at IBM. These codes were jointly developed by Josh Milthorpe and myself. The portions of the code written by me are copyright of ANU but are available to public under the EPL. For more information visit: http://cs.anu.edu.au/~Josh.Milthorpe/x10.html. These codes are also linked from http://x10.codehaus.org/For+Researchers.

More updates later :)

T91 MT tip

Laptop is dying ;-)

This is like 'thinking aloud' after reading this article on infoworld.
I have a prophesy (!!??) to make: "Laptop is dying"
Think about it:
What do you use your latops for?
- Check Mail
- IM
- Skype
- Powerpoint
- May be programming (?). Really, are you serious? ;-)
What do you use your desktop for?
- All the above
- and Programming (without any doubt)
What can an netbook do?
- All that the laptop can do
- But is very cheap and more importantly quite a lot portable (my T91MT is about 940 grms), and pretty good battery life.
What can an iPad do?
- All the things that a netbook can do (and is probably better at it), I haven't used one.
- except Programming!
How many of you program?
- Not many, I guess. Are we still short of good programmers ?

So the logical conclustion from above ;-)
# iPad is going to keep selling
# Netbook is also probably going to keep selling
# So is Desktops
## But the story of laptops don't look very healthy, unless they start making it very very portable and affordable as Netbooks are now.

Sloppy journalism

This is like the 'not again!' moment..
Some time ago I had reported about some sloppy reporting in blogs (http://tovganesh.blogspot.com/2009/02/reporting-and-blogs-blatant-errors.html). I would have given that some neglect thinking that it was just a blog!? But today a friend of mine pointed me to this stupid report on a news site:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/7524727/cheryl-cole-contracts-deadly-virus/

Which essentially claims again that Malaria is caused by Virus! Horrible error made again! Either the quality of reporting has noose dived or as Rupert Murdoch says 'quality reporting comes at a price'. I am quite reluctant to take side with the later as I feel that there should be free flow of credible information for a healthy society rather than it being for an 'elite only'. BBC news is primary example of this 'free flow', whome I think, do a wonderful job of reporting and is accessible to everyone who as a simple radio. We still can access BBC via short wave radios, anyone remembers those?

Bharat: Bandh and Math

The opposition parties in India organized a one day 'bandh'. I guess, beining right now not in Bharat, makes me less sensitive to these happenings. The purpose of the bandh was apparently to protest again high price rise in India in past few months. I fully support this cause. But after I see that those protesting resoting to damagin public property (including expensive public transport buses), I have heavy reservations about the authenticity of this bandh altogether and all the people who promoted it. Public property is my money, and so is of every one who pays up tax in some form or another. People destorying it, makes me really worry.

In another news, this year's Mental Calculation World Cup, 2010 held in Magdeburg, Germany was topped by Priyanshi Somani from India (http://www.recordholders.org/en/events/worldcup/2010/results.html). Thought would mention this, because main stream media in India probably has other interesting topics to discuess ;-)

Important intermediate binary release for MeTA Studio

This is with reference to the previous post for updated binaries (http://tovganesh.blogspot.com/2010/05/intermediate-binary-release-for-meta.html), just making it more clear in a separate post.

- This is an important update, any one using MeTA Studio must update to this binary release

- The current version number is 2.0.15052010

- This update, with out change in version number re-enables online updates. Any further updates to be shipped as online update, till major changes are needed.

- Also includes updated docs for API changes

- Moves the binary package download to Google code. Skydrive will still be used for hosting user scripts.

Update: There is a new online update available (now the version number is 2.0.24062010) that fixes issue with Java3D rendering. You will need to have v 2.0.15052010 installed before you can apply this update to make it work correctly.

OneNote on Linux using Office webapps

I don't really use MS Office too much (neither OpenOffice or Google docs), most of my docs are done with LaTeX. But I have been using Office 2007 for quite some time on T91MT and I must admit that MS has done some really nice work on it. I particularly use OneNote (with inking and audio) and is probably the most used application for me from the suite.

Now MS has released Office web apps on Skydrive. Though limited, it basically serves the purpose. I am able to use them on Linux (finally!), especially OneNote (no advanced features though!). I plan to review office web apps in a few days, on how it fairs on Linux using Firefox. So stay tuned ;-)

Random thought