A shell on my Motorola A780 Smartphone

Lately i've been working to get a shell on my Motorola A780 Smartphone. Once i get this working properly, I have two possibilities with this cool gadget. Using liloader and some AT command tweaks you can set the phone in an usblan mode. The usbnet linux kernel module is mandatory, and we can get a telnet shell over USB. The second possibility is installing qonsole(A java based console program on the phone) though the font of qonsole is too small and we must use a virtual keyboard on A780.

More details on using A780 with Linux can be found here.
More details on installing qonsole can be found here(this page is in german, use google translator to get an english version of it).

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties. - Sir Francis Bacon.

Still wondering How to choose a Desktop Linux Distro?

Read a nice article on Desktop Linux Distros just now, its already 4:30AM, woke up half an hour ago to have a glass of water and will be probably awake for some more time... given below is a small excerpt from the article on DesktopLinux.

<excerpt>

Probably everyone who reads DesktopLinux.com -- and certainly yours truly -- encounters the same question over and over again: "What's the best Linux desktop distribution?" Now, while some people will swear up and down that Slackware or Fedora or even Puppy, for that matter, is the best Linux desktop, I think the answer is more complicated. In fact, I don't think there is a single answer.

I think the best Linux desktop is the one that's best for a particular person based on their needs and level of Linux expertise. So, the next time someone asks you that question, I suggest you reply with a couple of questions of your own.

</excerpt>

Read the complete article here.

Everything that can be invented, has been invented. - Charles H. Duell

Portable Firefox - your browser, your way... in your pocket

Recently came across Portable Firefox which is a browser that can be run off a portable drive. Planning to install it on all my portable storage devices viz... 1GB SD card, 1GB CF card and my 4GB iPod mini.

Portable FF has all the same great features as regular Firefox including popup-blocking, tabbed-browsing, integrated search, improved privacy features, automatic updating and more.

More on Installation and Usage of Portable FF can be found here.

Though Portable FF is currently available only for Windoze, we can hope that they roll out one for Linux also.

There are some more cool applications which can be run off a portable drive, check them out here.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself. - Blaise Pascal

OS X style Docks for Linux and Windoze

The Dock i mentioned about in a couple of my previous posts has been ported to Linux and Windoze as well.

For Linux, there's one called kxDocker and there are lots of them for Windoze, some worth mentioning are MobyDock DX, RK Launcher, and Object Dock.

For more details on using kxDocker, checkout this article from LinuxJournal, it also explains about 3D-Desktop a virtual desktop switching tool with 3D looks.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke

Linux on a 2nd Generation iPod mini

iPodLinux doesn’t officially support Linux on the second generation iPod mini yet. There is a full write up of the installation process on the net. It really isn’t that hard, but this page will save you the trouble of piecing five pages of information together. Have a look.

I tried it myself long time ago, and was successful in installing it on my iPod mini, iPodLinux comes bundled with some very useful applications, a file browser, and an image viewer are a few to name...

Check out the complete list of applications availabale for iPodLinux.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.- George Bernard Shaw

Internet Explorer - the browser with most rendering bugs

Internet Explorer has the most buggy algorithms when it comes to rendering things on screen.
Continuing to work on my JS Dock, i figured out that IE is most buggy when it comes to rendering PNG images(with more than 256 colors!!!) with transparency/alpha component(though there are workarounds which dont always help!)
Also it has problems with setting the heights of tags using CSS. Firefox renders the same things beautifully and is a visual treat to watch, on the other hand, IE renders it badly, unpredictably oversized DIVs and PNG images with white background, and makes it look ugly.

Check the dock here.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. - Richard Feynman

JAnimationShop Reincarnates

Started work again on my favorite project JAnimationShop after a long time. It was started as a college project done in Java, then released on SF.net. Had not worked on it for a long time now, and now it's time to implement the things that were planned, viz...

• Refactoring the whole code to have a better Architecture and Design.
• Incorporate some kind of plugin architecture so that users can write plugins to export/import different image formats.
• Workout a file format for storing images in application specific format.
• Implement Undo/Redo
• Implement DnD.
• ...

currently trying to prioritize on these plus some more features for the next big release, the list goes on growing though...

If anyone's confident at Java Image Processing just using the Java Core API, and want to contribute to this project in any way, feel free to contact me.

PS : (I don't intend using Java advanced imaging API, called JAI, anytime in the near future since it is still maintained by sun as an extension package)

Martial arts is not about fighting; it's about building character. - Bo Bennett

OS X = 2 Cool

I think the Look and Feel OS X probably has the best influence on Web Design. Docking windows, Panels and Smooth animations in the UI are just some to mention. I recently found out that lot of people are willing to go OS X style for website navigation using the Docking image menubar either on top or bottom of the page, it's a visual treat. The Icons zoomin smoothly as you move over them, A professionally done version (uses loads of JS code) for which i got a link from one of my online buddies can be found here they call it the FishEye Widget though.

A flash version can be found here / here.

Me too went ahead and developed a very lightweight javascript version of this and currently trying to improve it in many ways, it can be found here.

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter Drucker