ImageExpo : Sharing screen of Symbian OS

Posted by on July 15, 2009 4 comments

I use my Nokia N79 for almost all possible tasks one can think of. Be it watching movies, listening to music or even keeping track of my expanses & schedule. Since I don’t have internet at home right now in New Delhi, my only source of keeping an eye on the reel life is either Internet from Office or GPRS.

For chatting, I use Nimbuzz now instead of Slick. Slick is also good, but to send a message I have to press the “0” Key 3 times as the default enter key for some reason doesn’t work. Besides, the web backend based Nimbuzz allows me to send & receive files from my Mobile phone to other users over Google Talk or Yahoo!. But chatting on a Mobile phone is not the best experience due to a small keyboard instead of a full fledged keyboard of a Computer. Due to this I was looking for something which show the screen of my Nokia N79 on my PC so that I can control the phone from my PC, this way I can chat using the PC keyboard which is quite fast to type on compared to the Mobile phone’s keypad.

The search is finally over. I found the perfect application for this purpose, Digia ImageExpo. Its a Java based software which installs with its own Java runtime in your PC. After the desktop counterpart’s installation you need to install the companion software on your Phone running Symbian OS 9.2 or later or Symbian UIQ OS. I installed the SIS file on my Nokia N79 & tried to connect over USB cable as well as Bluetooth, it connected fine & in an instant & I was able to see the screen of my Phone on my PC.

 

 

As seen in the screenshot, I can click on the virtual keypad which will click the button on the phone too doing some action as associated. The biggest benefit for me with ImageExpo is while chatting. Now I don’t have to rely on phone’s keypad for chatting anymore. It also maps the keys of your phone to keyboard like the F3 keys becomes the Symbian menu key, Backspace becomes Clear key etc.

This is how I use ImageExpo, in what I call “Work mode” as the rest of the real estate is not required much while working. If your phone has an accelerometer & the display rotates while rotating the phone, then the screen on ImageExpo also rotates.

This is one application which I recommend to anyone who needs to share there phone’s screen.

Office 2010 : Breath of fresh air… again

Posted by on July 14, 2009 1 comment

Microsoft recently released Office 2010 Technical Preview on Microsoft Connect. I downloaded My copy right away. The 32bit version weighs around 530 MB.

M.S Office is the de-facto standard when it comes to Office Productivity suits out there. OpenOffice.org does provides a good competition but Microsoft just one upped them again with the new UI in Office 2010. Working in Office 2007 & 2010 is so easy now, that OpenOffice looks like an arcane antique compared to it.

The Technical Preview contains most of the application usually available in regular Office suits but I only installed Excel, Word & Powerpoint as these are the only application I use in M.S. Office anyway. Neowin has already done a good review of Office 2010 technical preview so I won’t go into many of the details as those are something people will be able to read on various websites anyway.

So, why another version of Office? Wasn’t Office 2007 good enough? How much can Microsoft enhance an already mature product like Office which hardly has any features lacking that I can think of so why another Office? The answer is simple, The new Office Web & a user experience catered to Windows 7.

Since the day I used Office 2007, its hard for me to work on Office 2003 or OpenOffice. I just can’t keep searching for options under all those menus. Microsoft Office already has so many features, just that these features were not visible to most people due to which they though M.S office is boring. The ribbon UI did a good thing that it now shows all the things that you will need right in front of your eyes. It made working on Office even more easier, something even Apple iWork & OpenOffice are not able to provide yet. Apple iWork is still good as it is only available to those using a Mac.

I downloaded some DOC files available in Connect, reading a document is so much better in Word now, which is something I miss in other Office Suites. You can minimize the ribbon at will. But the best feature that I like is the security feature which were already three in old version of office, just that now they are in your face due to the new Back Stage feature of Office 2010 which makes everything much clear. You can set permission etc to Office documents like who can edit it, or even if editing is allowed. The color scheme used in Office 2010 is also more soothing to the eyes.

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

Whether Microsoft admits it or not, but for a casual user, office person etc the changes are mostly in the UI & ease of use only. Office Web is good but since I haven’t used it much right now, I won’t comment on it. However, Office 2010 provides native integration with Office Live. It even supports saving in PDF format without any 3rd party plugin. It would be better if Microsoft provides native access to Live Mesh so that we can share documents directly on the cloud & share with whoever we want.

Since my work in SlideShare includes creating occasional slides & presentation, Powerpoint 2007 is a necessity while Office 2010 just makes my work better & simpler. Finding things, creating styles, arrows… links etc is quite easy.

Now the million dollar question, should you switch to Office 2010? The following scenario come to my mind….

1) You are an Individual Student who occasionally needs to edit a Presentation or Document. You don’t have any Office suite installed & don’t want to go for pirated software. Since you needs are occassional only even I don’t recommend paying $150 for Office Student & teacher edition as there is no point paying so much money for something you only use once in a while. You best bet is to use OpenOffice or similar office suite from other vendors.

2) You are a student & can Pirate Office 2010, well… then I can’t do much to stop you from using it.

3) You are a business using Office 2003, just upgrade. Office 2010 will bring huge time saving to your enterprise

4) You are a business using office 2007, stick to what you got. The feature set isn’t much different from Office 2007 so better stick to that only.

5) You are a business buying Office suite for the first time. If it is only basic work, where individuals work on Excel Sheets on there workstation then stick to OpenOffice, if you require collaboration then buy Office 2010. It collaborative feature & intigration with SharePoint Server is unmatched by all rivals.

Other then the UI refinement, there isn’t much that I will be missing in Office 2010 over Office 2007 myself.

Nokia Ovi Suite 2.0 : What PC Suite should have been

Posted by on June 30, 2009 4 comments

Nokia users are using Nokia PC Suite since god knows when. It is a software I first used with a Nokia 6600 4 or 5 years back. It looks still the same, except for the updated icons maybe. Nokia was lacking behind Microsoft when it comes to a Mobile phone’s desktop counterpart application. They tried to succeed with Noka Ovi Suite 1.0 which was created in WPF for Windows XP, Vista & Windows 7 but it lacked SMS & Contact Management feature & Instead gave Music, video, photo management instead. Seriously Nokia, a phone is for making calls also.

Recently Nokia released Nokia OVI Suite beta 2.0. This time it is made using Qt Framework due to which it is very slim is size compared to over 200 MB for WPF based Nokia Ovi suite 1.0. Lets not talk about Nokia PC Suite 7.x as UI wise it was garbage. Though it was pretty fast & used to do everything fine. Development in Qt also gives Nokia the ability to port Ovi Suite to Linux & Mac OS. Since Nokia is a device vendor, the best way for them to make money & capture market share is to make there product available on all OS.

Sony Ericsson released SE File Manager & then Media Manager which bought a nice UI & experience. Nokia just one upped them with Ovi Suite 2.0. Things are clearly laid out in the new Ovi Suite.

Ovi Suite copy

The home tab has everything you will usually need. It shows a glance at all your contacts, SMS, Pictures & Music on the device. You can also connect the phone to internet for using GPRS/3G on your PC using this Ovi Suite. Nokia is touting Ovi suite as the only connectivity application you will ever need & they are not wrong. It can even update the phone’s firmware, applications from Nokia etc.

I don’t use Outlook anymore but it even supports syncing your contacts & notes, calendars with Outlook or some other colander. You can add contacts using Ovi Suite & it will sync it with the Phone next time when you sync it. I disabled automatic sync because then it takes time to get usable after starting.

Keep in mind that Ovi Suite has 2 contact lists. One is of your phone which can be seen after clicking the small arrow below the contact list which will then open the contact list of your Phone. What I did was to make changes to my contact list in my Computer once, then connected the phone via bluetooth & copied all the contacts to the Phone by dragging & dropping on the phone’s list.

Contacts

SMS is in the form of threaded SMS. Now I am someone who cleans his Sent items folder so its of no use for me. But for those who don’t, its actually good. You can also make smart filters which will sort SMS they way you define. Not just that, you can see SMS by Contacts or a list of all SMS. It also shows the SMS saved in the “My Folder” of SMS application. Though I prefer the old PC suite way in which it used to show SMS saved in folders inside “My Folder” in a tree view. I am filing a bug, hope Nokia is able to incorporate that feature.

SMS

You can also use Ovi Suite to sync your Music, but I prefer Windows Media Player for that which automatically converts music to WMA & my Phone as well as PC are in Sync. For some reason Ovi suite doesn’t converts songs, it just copies them as they are.

If you have Ovi Suite connected to your phone via Bluetooth then it shows a notification when there is a new SMS or Call in the system tray too.

From what it seems, Nokia is trying to bring an experience unrivaled by any other Phone manufacturer. They now have there own music store too which makes sense as people are using more & more there phones for there music needs as well as video. Having an all in one Suite like Ovi Suite can make the N Series phones just more user friendly. You can download Ovi Suite 2.0 from Nokia Labs

Grafitti : C.P, New Delhi

Posted by on May 19, 2009 1 comment

I am posting this cos I haven’t seen an art like this in Delhi anywhere. This doesn’t count all the wall drawings, posters, ads I see all over the walls of Delhi’s architecture.

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First week at SlideShare ends

Posted by on May 15, 2009 4 comments

Today marks the end of my first official week of work in SlideShare, New Delhi. Its going good so far. Since I took a home close to office, traveling isn’t much of a problem & I can even walk from office to home, considering its 5 KM from my home.

I haven’t finished setteling down in New Delhi yet. Most of my cloths, stuff isn’t here yet & we still have to buy a dustbin & another water bucket. I hope a trip to Amar Colony Market will solve these problems, over the weekend. I might have to go to Lucknow over the weekend next month to get my bike to New Delhi. Spending Rs 25-30 everyday one way on traveling is costly.

The first day I joined SliedShare I was told to give an Inaugeral speech on “How can geeks score girls”. Well, the team here is good, helpful & helps in learning a lot…. but comon, I am sure everyone is well versed in this area already. Oh! & we got 3 Saurav here including me, so we are having an Identity Crisis here. When Boss calls from Saurav, its confusing who he is calling. I told them to call me “GX” but then GX is not a professional name (it never was)… so I m still trying to figure out nick name. “Rake” might work out too.

First 2 days were used in configuring my workstation here only. I hope I will soon get a bigger LCD Monitor as reading text on a CRT is giving me headache as I am not habitual to CRT anymore. I might also get a laptop from SlideShare as my primary machine.

I started learning HTML, XHTML & CSS using W3schools & htmldog by the guidence of our Tech Lead, Kapil Mohan. He teaches good. I am not giving my ideas of UI here yet as that I would prefer to give after 1 or 2 months only.

I will be bringing my workstation here only after 3 months. Till then I will work on my phone only. It was a good decision to buy Nokia N79, it no less then a small PC itself.

Today is the weekend at SlideShare, but my week never ends.

Time to leave Infranix I.T Solutions

Posted by on May 1, 2009 7 comments

This is to inform everyone that I am leaving for Delhi & will be working with Slideshere, New Delhi office now under the supervision of Amit Ranjan & Kapil Mohan from May 2009 onwards.

I will be out of touch of internet for some days till I am able to get a new SIM. I won’t be taking my PC with me so the only way of communication will be my new number & will be accessing internet through my Phone & GPRS.

I needed this job, needed a reason & way to get out of Lucknow again. This time I hope I won’t do the mistakes I did last time & life will be better. Compared to the last time when I was working in Delhi, I know about Web 2.0 , about 100% more which my work speaks.

I am over the relationship crap now. The emotions switch is off. I lost some people but gained few people too. Divy Prakash was right, there is no point crying for someone who treats you like shit, leave him/her & move on, I did & I sure found better people.

Its like a new beginning with new people, new job, new relationships which I am more serious about this time as being a Casanova will spoil my name only in the long run.

It was a pleasure working at Infranix with the fellow member & the team.

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