Basic4android .. Clever!

I can't deny it. I'm addicted to BASIC.

Although through the years I've used several programming and scripting languages, the BASIC programming language, being my first love, is the nearest and closest to my heart. I've done complete working applications with MSX BASIC, MS-Basic, GW-Basic, QBasic, Visual Basic, RealBASIC and even ones like Gambas.

Few days ago, I found something called "Basic4android", and immediately downloaded the free trial version from their website, and currently playing with it a little. So far, it seems good enough.

One thing that actually got my attention was that they use the emulator, or an actual phone, as a visual GUI designer. Clever, isn't it? Instead of coding their own visual designer, which is the reason some similar projects have ended badly, they're just using the actual device.

The only drawback I see so far is that it is only released for Windows.

From what I can see, so far, the produced apps are small in size and performs really nice. I haven't done any benchmarking, not yet anyway, but they seem quit equivalent to those written in Eclipse/ADK.

Another Reason to Burn Down Windows!

I'm already annoyed for using Windows on my notebook, and not being able to get the full potential of it under Linux. This said, it seems like Windows doesn't want to leave it that. I used my work computer to log on to WLM, only to find a message on my next login telling me that my account has been hacked. OK, might happen, although I thought it was a mistake from Microsoft's Live.com. But two days later, after changing my password, I'm faced with the same message and required to change my password again.

This time, after finishing all the identification process and changed the password, I went to check my SENT folder. Right to the point, it was full of spam. About 50 messages that I haven't sent. What stupid hacker sends emails from my account, and forgets to delete them from my sent folder?

Investigating the problem, it seems that it was caused by me logging to WLM from my work computer. This one has Windows XP on it, and is managed by the Company's IT team. I can't even do a proper scan on it, as I don't have the proper privileges.

So, until I get Linus properly setup on my notebook, I'm sticking to my Android phone for online services!

Nokia's new Windows Phones

October 2011 was when Microsoft announced they're working with Nokia to develop a series of Windows mobile based smart phones. These days it's all over the tech scene news, with leaked news, specs, photos, etc., which promises the phone is about to hit the market.

The question I'm asking now is: will Microsoft-Nokia's phone survive the smart phone war and have a piece o of the Plus pie?

I'll look the Arabic/ middle east market. Here, people who but Nokia phones can be divided into two main categories: the ones buying cheap feature phones, and those who are buying Nokia because they feel they're more familiar with the phone's GUI. Despite the fact that most modern phones have GUI's that don't resemble the old ones.

Both of these categories don't actually care about the "smartness" of the phone, they want to either buy cheap phones that does voice calls, or buy modern phones, despite the price, that would have a familiar interface to what they're used to. I have personally had many discussions with Nokia phones owners about switching to iPhone or android-based and their answer was that they don't need all the features nor do they ready to try new things.

Hence, Nokia shall face a great challenge in marketing their Windows phones. They're not cheap low end phones, nor have the same "familiar" software. If Nokia fails promoting for their new devices, they will be in a bad situation that might bring down three whole company!

On the other hand, back in the days before iPhones and android phones, Windows phones were not so popular. Blackberry's were the mark for smart phones. Windows phones were something that geeks would buy just to check out or experiment with. Something like showing off to your friends today by having an 8.5" diskette. This doesn't contribute well to marketing the phone.

Facebook's FlashCache: a Linux ExpressCache?

In a previous post I was trying to get the best of my Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook, with Linux. One of the points that I intended to research is how to implement the ExpressCache in a Linux environment.

ExpressCache, in Condusiv's own words, is an innovative technology developed by Condusiv Technologies to improve system speeds by incorporating SSD technology advances into Windows 7 systems.

In plain English, ExpressCache is a way to utilize the SSD storage as a caching layer to speed up reads and writes during applications runtime, among other things.

Now, in my search for how to implement such technology in a Linux environment, I came upon what I might call a shocking discovery, namely FlashCache. FlashCache is a, shockingly, facebook open source project that introduces the same concept and which was released on April 27, 2010. It seems that facebook, in sake of speeding up their data extraction, for obvious reasons, have developed this technique. It is open source, and it works greatly with Linux (actually, I believe it was developed for Unix/Linux).

Now, Implementing the flashcache is not hard. There are a couple of tutorials online, some of them are specifically for Ubuntu, and a nice Wiki on the Arch Linux Wiki page, but since I crave learning I'm planning on understanding the Block Cache on Linux, first, then implement that on my installation. I'll be fully documenting and blogging about it at a later time.

Samsung Series 5 14 inch Ultrabook -- First Impressions

Just got a Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook, the 14 inch, one. The device comes configured with a 500GB HDD, 4GB RAM (DDR3), a Core i5 processor and a Radeon display card.

These are my first impressions on the device, but before I start this, I must say that I was actually trying to get the 13.3”, with an SSD instead of the HDD. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it anywhere in the Egyptian market, and all my trials to contact Samsung Egypt were unsucessful.

The first thing I liked about it was it's keyboard. I like the US layout over the British layout (the one with the big “ENTER” key). It's been a while since I had a keyboard to my liking which is nice.

The big touchpad is also a plus, and it feels really nice and smooth with nice “click” to its buttons.

The full VGA and HDMI ports (vs. mini and micro VGA and HDMI ports) are another plus, since the device is thick enough to accommodate them with ease. This spares me the trouble of carrying converting cables all the time, as I do lots of presentations.

Another thing I liked, although might be considered unorthodox in these devices is that it has both the mic and phones jack combined together in one. To be frank, I haven't tested it, yet, but my guess is that a headset compatible with Android phones would be recognized by the device. Another save on the cables side!

Now to the things I didn't like.

The things that I hate the most is the heat! The device does get over-heated and high on temperature to an annoying level. In fact, I couldn't keep it on my legs for more than 20 minutes, and it was starting to feel real hot.

The second annoyance is the monitor. The vertical viewing angle is very small, leading to a distorted display whenever I raise or lower my body. I had to re-adjust the monitor angle every time I shifted in my seating position.

The third thing, which I consider a disappointment, is the battery life. Fully charged, the battery lasted around 3hrs 20minutes, with the brightness set to about 70% and no USB devices connected neither a CD-ROM used. Moreover, I was connected via an Ethernet cable and disabling the WiFi!! To be frank, I don't know if this is the normal trend of the battery, or is it just my unit, but I recall reading somewhere online that this device's battery lasts for 6+hrs. (Might do a recheck that). (UPDATE: [2012-07-31]: I was able to get a battery life a little over 5 hours, today. It is probably because I installed all the drivers and used the Easy Settings Application to Optimize the Power Usage. The problem is: all this is done under Windows. Under Linux, things can't get that good, unfortunately)

The device utilized a 16GB SSD for hibernating and fast booting, which is a plus, in my opinion.

Installing Ubuntu 12.04 was a breeze, and it detected everything correctly. Now I'm planning to re-install it with partition setup that would allow for fast booting and hibernate/wakeup, utilizing the 16GB SSD as boot and root partitions, but that will be the talk of another day!

Windows Azure -- Thoughts

Reading about Microsoft creating a Linux client for its web platform Windows Azure produced mixed feelings inside my brain. For once, Microsoft is actually writing software for Linux, which is a confession of the existence and popularity of such marvelous operating system. On the other hand, though, I wondered if this is an attempt from Microsoft to invade the Linux community? You see, when Gates published his book "The Road Ahead", back in the mid-90's, he had this vision that in "the future" all well have on our desks is a terminal, a minimal computing unit that is capable of only connecting to the internet, where all our files are stored and where we can rent times on the software applications we use.

Windows Azure is actually, IMHO, the realization of this idea or vision. Thinking in Microsoft's shoes, I would say that the best strategy for controlling the emerging market of the cloud would simply be by providing access to such service from all possible terminals. This will bring customers from allover, and in the same time turn all computers around, including those running rival operating systems into merely access points for my services.

I might be over-thinking this, but knowing the history of Microsoft, I can't stop myself thinking this way.

On a third hand, I recalled Linus Torvalds' famous words: If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux, it means I've won.

Windows RT Closed for Third Party Browsers

Microsoft, announcing the new Windows RT, or Windows on ARM, as it was known during the development phase, is repeating the 90's browser mistake once again.

The new Windows RT, reportedly is not going to allow any third party browsers, other than Microsoft's own Internet Explorer. Will it be history repeating itself?

Mozilla, the makers of the open source browser FireFox, have expressed their concerns regarding this issue, highlighting their vision of the ARM processors as the future.

It is worth mentioning here that Microsoft is a very minor player in the market of the ARM-driven devices, such as smart mobile phones and tablets, but as the market share of these devices is increasing, their seeking a bigger share.

Personally, I know I wouldn't by a tablet with Windows on it, not with all the Android and potentially other linux-based OS's, like Ubuntu making their way into that market.

Sozi

A little over a year ago, I met Prezi, for the first time. For those not familiar with it, Prezi is an online tool for creating non-linear presentations. Although, the term non-linear doesn't accurately describe what Prezi has to offer, Prezi is a very good tool to produce these Flash-based presentations.

Time passed, and I didn't really use Prezi for more than two or three presentations. Probably this is because we still have the "Slides" culture, but every now and then, when I need to initiate a new presentation or renew an existing one, Prezi comes back to the front of my head. Every time Prezi pops up in front of me, I try to find some desktop tool to produce similar results, preferably Open Source (Well, I'm a Linux-only user now).

Well, today I came across this Inkscape extension called "Sozi". Sozi is an extension for Inkscape that produces animated svg's with resulting Posters or "canvas" similar to those produced by Prezi. It is pretty simple, and straight forward once you get grip of the basic concepts. A nice introductory tutorial can be found here [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOuf7w_Qesk].

Sozi official website [http://sozi.baierouge.fr/wiki/doku.php]

Installation Instructions [http://sozi.baierouge.fr/wiki/en:install]

OMG! Ubuntu! Conducts an Interesting Survey

An interesting survey results published to OMG!Ubunto! indicated that 51% of the Ubuntu users use Android devices. The survey also shows, among other interesting facts, that age of Ubuntu users ranges between 25 to 35 years old.

Although the survey shows that 75% of Ubuntu users also use Windows, it doesn't show for what applications they use it for (nor what applications they use Ubuntu for, for that matter), nor what percentage of that group uses both Windows and Ubuntu in a dual-boot setup.

All in all, the survey is interesting and very useful.

Moving to Ubuntu Linux - pt.01

Entirely abandoning the Microsoft Windows operating system to another platform has always seemed inapplicable. Someone like me, for instance, has been working with Windows ever since Windows 3.0. With loads of accumulated documents, software and experiences, it's really hard to start all over.

But with the Linux distributions growing more mature, I thought to give it a try and see if one can really abandon the Windows. It's been three months now, and I'm spending more than 95% of my computer time on Ubuntu, so I'm willing to say/pretend that it's a very close to entirely abandoning Windows.

Note: this experiment does not cover gaming, as I'm not a gamer, myself.

Planning

Creating a list of all the critical items in one's computer use is crucial before the starting of this process. For me, the following was the list of critical items of concern:

1. Editing MS-Office 2007/2010 documents: From my past experiences with the various Linux distros, it was never a problem dealing with the old MS-Office document formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt). Dealing with the new (.docx, .xlsx and .pptx) formats was something I must experiment with and be confident about.
2. Accessing my corporate email server (MS-Exchange Server): My company works with Exchange server [period].
3. Installing Eclipse with the Android SDK: As I'm experimenting with the Android platform these days, having my familiar IDE (eclipse with the ADK) is something I'm concerned about.
4. Accessing MS-SQL database (which resides on another server): In my work, I prepare lots of reports, mostly excel-based, that read from MS-SQL server database. It's very important for me to be able to read and modify an MS-SQL database from within my computer to produce such reports.
5. Accessing the company's VPN.

Up to the time of writing these lines, I've succeeded in the first 3 items, with various degrees, still working on the 4th item and haven't started yet on the 5th.