Socio-materiality: Creating words for the heck of it

While last week, I was in NTNU, Trondheim for a friend’s PhD defense, I decided to stay back and listen to a seminar on “Socio-materiality”. The “jargon monoxide” (super lol!!) to describe that technology, work and organization cannot be viewed separately. We’ve definitely heard that human & non-humans are an assemblage and cannot be looked at separately... and I completely agree that academics deserve ridicule, when they do such things!!

Nonetheless, after the seminar I couldn’t believe that the whole 3hrs, we repeatedly kept hearing that technology changes social behavior and that in turns shapes technology and there is a case of “entanglement” that makes the social/human and material/technology to be only looked at as a single object. The cases were interesting (especially the case of Gartner and their Magic Quadrants) and in each of the case we see the entanglement and mutual shaping. What I still don’t understand is that why we didn’t have an uproar from the audience (… and those much more interested in the concept than me) to this jargon monoxide!!

As researchers we continuously look at ways in which we understand the things around us. Language is one to interpret, understand and communicate the different interpretations inside our head. My father shouts out while I’m writing this, “Research is only searching again and again, what already exists and is probably already known”. If that were true, then jargon monoxide is the basis of research… We create new jargons and retire old ones!! Is that our primary job??

Apple wants 17+ yrs old only to use Opera

In another of Apple crazy works at the App Store, Apple does not allow users under the age of 17 yrs to download Opera. Opera is the first non-Apple web browser to be made available at the App Store, but with that crazy restriction. Now Opera, just like Safari opens web pages. It actually does it better depending on which benchmark you are looking at.

Opera reacted in the following manner:

“I’m very concerned,” says Standal. “Seventeen is very young, and I am not sure if, at that age, people are ready to use such an application. It’s very fast, you know, and it has a lot of features. I think the download requirement should be at least 18.”

For those under 17, there is a workaround. Just visit www.opera.com and download it. We do not ask for your age or your credit card number. Please, get your parents’ permission before using this browser

Opera does have a sense of humor

iPad 2 : Something about Apple just fascinates people

Why do people get fascinated with Apple products? I’ve always wondered… Is it really that Apple products are so much better than what’s available in the market? They had the iPod, the iMac, the iPhone and the iPad (…to name some) and gave them cult status. Now with the iPad 2, I see the same fascination in people in response to the launch and the ads.

The iPad 2 really isn’t the best in terms of hardware packed into the device. Motorola Xoom/Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has the camera on both front and back better than the iPad 2. Battery life and processors are equally competitive. The ecology around Android is really awesome and growing rapidly. The iPad 2 is thinner, but wasn’t the iPad already thin?? The iPad 2 doesn’t have USB. It does not run flash. It will use proprietary formats for connecting to other devices. It does not have an SD card reader. So why are people still fascinated with the Apple iPad 2?

One thing is how Apple sells you the stuff... The ads make an emotional connection with you. The people who tell you things in the Apple ads, just like Steve Jobs speaks at the launch of these devices, make you feel fascinated. The “cool-ness” of Apple devices are another fascination. The external design and look-and-feel of Apple products are these days probably similar to other high-end devices, but the overall experience of the Apple software in my opinion is the biggest difference. How many times on the iOS have you seen a “Force Close” dialog, that an Android device would often throw? How many times do you feel an interface element to be out of place, when using an Android device?

I write this as I’ve just finished playing with a friend’s Motorola Xoom while at the library. I’ve tried the Galaxy tab, the iPad, but none of them are “Post PC” as Jobs describes it at the moment. Somebody nicely said, its an Apple vs Oranges comparison. You choose the fruit you like… I don’t like both yet!!

The Mirage of Mobile Number Portability

Just like a thirsty traveller in a desert follows the mirage thinking that its water, Indian mobile subscribers have been waiting for mobile number portability for long. Little do they know that when mobile portability actually arrives, it’ll only be a mirage of what they hope for!! Mobile Number Portability is the ability for a subscriber to carry their mobile phone numbers and switch operators. Thus, by just paying a small fees of Rs. 19/- you would be able to change your mobile operator and still keep your same phone number.

Mobile Number Portability (MNP) exists in a lot of countries. Basically in most of these places, mobile numbers are considered as assets or belongings of an individual, similar to your house address. In India, it is being advertised by operators as an opportunity for customers to move to a ‘better’ operator, when you are dissatisfied with your current operator… and this is exactly why I say it’s a mirage!

Every operator has some number of customers who don’t like their service. From most people I have talked to, every operator has this group of dissatisfied customers. But since anyone who was dissatisfied would previously just change their phone numbers, it wasn’t a big deal for these customers… They are so fed up with the operators that they have already moved to the next operator. On the other hand, people who cannot change their phone numbers because the phone number is really important for them, generally adjust with the operator and the ecosystem balances itself naturally like any mature market does. What Mobile Number Portability is not doing is changing the infrastructure or the technology deployed by the operators. It does not change the policies, tariffs or customer service of the mobile operator. For a sector which is somewhat saturated in a lot of circles, it really is not much of a change agent.

If the reports from the pilot in Haryana is anything to go about, there really hasn’t been a large change in the customer base and market shares of the mobile operators. Other than Idea, most operators have not advertised a lot about MNP. Most operators are following a wait and watch policy and not many want to be first-movers in grabbing customers from others. Its been over a month for MNP in Haryana and that should have been enough to see the change factors because of MNP. But the lack lustre effects of MNP have shown that it is something that the market and the customers are not enthusiastic about. May be in other circles the market might be more dynamic, but we’ll only know when the nation-wide launch happens on 20th Jan, 2011. It will be interesting days to see how the different telecom circles work their way in the post-MNP era.

I think of the mobile operators today like politicians. Everyone is dissatisfied with politicians. There is always something to complain about them. Still you expect everyone should be voting and democracy should run smoothly.

Apple’s Magic Mouse and now Microsoft’s Touch Mouse

Apple was the company that made the GUI and the use of the mouse popular back in the old days. But ever since, Apple hasn’t been the best designers of the mouse and Apple has been often been criticized for not being able to make ergonomic pointing devices. Apple has tried numerous times to redefine the mouse with different shapes, design, button positions over the years, but the simple two/three button with scroll mouse has nearly been the market favorite including those who swear by Apple devices.

Last year Apple came out with what was another attempt to redesign the mouse. They called it the Magic Mouse. It was a failure at ergonomics and not many people loved it. Today at CES 2011, Microsoft Research presented what it hopes to be Mouse 2.0. It is a mouse without buttons, similar to a laptop trackpad. It does not have scroll or buttons and works based on the touch of the fingers. Thus you can swipe your fingers, perform pinch and zoom gestures etc. on the mouse surface. "One finger lets people manage individual documents or pages by flicking to quickly scroll, pan and tilt, and one thumb lets people move back or forward through a Web browser. Two fingers manage windows, letting people maximise, minimise, snap and restore them. Three fingers let people navigate their whole desktop, showing instant viewer or clearing their desktop."

Apple’s Mighty Mouse	Microsoft’s Touch Mouse

I am of the opinion that both the mice do not have what it takes to be called a revolution. There is already an installed base of users who are used to the two buttons and scroll and will not see any real benefit to move to these new gadgets. These do not have special features that are extremely important to computer users. If you have a laptop, you already have the trackpad do it for you.

Microsoft coming back to ARM

ARM, the processor manufacturer that powers 90% of the mobile phones, digital media and music players, hand-held game consoles, calculators and computer peripherals such as hard drives and routers is a super-power these days and Microsoft realizes this more than ever. That’s the reason why there is talk that Microsoft is going back to release a OS for the ARM processors.

Back in the old days of Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft has a release of Windows that ran on the ARM architecture, but due to pressure from Intel and the growing market of IBM-compatible PCs Microsoft stopped release OS running on ARM. Thus, Microsoft only released Windows for x86 architecture (…and sometimes for Itanium). Microsoft has had WindowsCE running on ARM, but it is not the Windows that is popularized. The latest buzz means that Windows 8, the next version of Windows will be able to run on ARM processors

The reason why this news is interesting is because Windows Mobile 7 was just released and is a different architecture than the desktop Windows. If this means anything, then it shows Microsoft’s idea that a common platform can be moved across different sizes of devices, similar to what Apple has been doing with the iPhoneOS, iPadOS, iPod Touch and OSX. The idea is that the OS can be stripped off services and run on smaller devices. Today as more and more devices became part of our lives, we want to have similar experiences on all these devices… probably through different interfaces, but want the way data is looked at through a common way. Especially as developers, it is frustrating that the same applications cannot be ported easily across processors and platforms. The web is definitely the future of data, but rich client applications are important for the experience and the browser is still not everything that the devices/PCs can do.

Hoping that we can move towards converging platforms… especially easy ways to port client applications across platforms

China bans wikileaks cablegate pages

The wikileaks release of the US cables is indeed the biggest newsmaker in world politics at the moment. Their leaks have shown the two-faced nature of diplomats, that we probably all knew, but never knew for certain. Nonetheless it is a major leak that could as some believe also result in World War III

The US government is clearly in a fix with the release of the cables and is trying to save face wherever it can by contacting its embassies around the world. Also Obama has said that the US government will exercise legal actions against wikileaks and its founder and run an embargo on this “irresponsible” and uncontrollable media.

But on the other side of the globe, China is clever enough to control the media. The Great fireWall of China just blocked the wikileaks cablegate pages and none from inside of China is able to view those pages on the internet. Now, if only the US learnt its lesson and started to whip naughty journalists and crazy activists, the world would have been a better… and safer place!!

Cheapest 5 Android Phones

While some including me believe that the top-end of mobile phones will live forever and the platforms of the top-end won’t come to the low-end, there are others who believe that open platforms like Android (or the many earlier Linux consortiums – CELF, OSDL) truly provides platform that can work on the high-end and low-end equally well.

But as we’ve quickly seen, instead of the hardware manufacturers, the software industry really has driven what hardware sells. We saw that for the PC market and are quickly seeing that in the mobile phone markets now. How the OS and the applications are making or breaking the success of the mobile phone handsets. Nevertheless, here are the cheapest Android phones in the Indian market, which may probably be global leading in terms of mobile phone growth in the low-end market… And the prices will keep dropping I guess!!

1. Huawei IDEOS U8300 – Rs. 6200/-

Huawei has many handsets in India in the CDMA market. Most of these handsets are serviced by operators that provide these mobile phones along with the plan. The IDEOS is manufactured in China and is sold in many markets around the world. I happened to see this phone is also available in Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia.

This entry-level smartphone was designed with the needs of young, mobile users in mind. This smartphone combines a QWERTY keyboard and a touch-screen in a small, chocolate-bar inspired package. Powered by Android 2.1, it comes with the most popular social networking applications pre-installed, so users can stay in touch anytime, anywhere.

For more information, please visit: www.huaweidevice.com/ideos

The phone has low battery life, but provides excellent features for the price.

2. Acer beTouch E110 – Rs. 6990/-

• Stylish, compact and slim design
• 2.8” (QVGA) resistive screen
• 5-way navi key
• 3G and Bluetooth connectivity

Looks pretty and is light-weight. Doesn’t have very good battery life, but does have some good applications and interfaces built-in like Spinlets and Nemo Player

 

3. Sony Ericsson X10 Mini Pro – Rs. 8700/-

- 240 x 320 pixels (QVGA)
- 2,6" capacitive touchscreen

- GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
- UMTS/HSPA 900/2100

- 5MP Camera with Flash
- WiFi

Great build quality and excellent software and hardware polish. Great support and service centers. Known brand

4. Samsung I5503 Galaxy 5 – Rs. 8800/-

• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 3.6 Mbps HSDPA support
• Smart dialing
• 2.8 inch TFT capacitive touchscreen
• Android OS v2.1 Eclair
• TouchWiz 3.0 UI customization (on both, I5801 has Orange UI too)
• 600 MHz processor
• 2MP camera with geo-tagging
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n support

 

5. Spice Mi300 – Rs. 9400/-

Android 2.1 Ready
Android Market Place
Google Messaging Services with Push Mail
AGPS

Key features

• 3.5G
• Wi- Fi
• 3.2” HVGA Capacitive Touch Screen
• 5 MP Camera

Troubleshooting smslib-based applications (DHIS Mobile, SCDRT, InventMobi, StocksTracker)

While I’ve been troubleshooting SMS Applications (based on smslib, Gnokii, Kannel) for over 3 yrs, it is excruciatingly painful to tell people the basics of the troubleshooting again and again. There have been numerous small docs, readme files, emails that have repeated the same things again and again. To people who have gone through with the implementation and fixed problems, I’ve repeatedly requested to document these at some place (…infact as part of their job profiles), but none have sadly been able to produce anything useful. So, here is an attempt to make the troubleshooting process a little more easier for someone who is stuck. There is always websearch that will finally give you the answer to the troubleshooting process, but this is just a reminder to myself where to look at.

0.) Archive the logs and send it... as basic as it sounds, ALWAYS look at the log file
1. Check the application/library version – report this as part of any question you are asking
2. Check the Native Library version and the Java Library version. These should ideally match or should have the same type. i.e if you are using RXTXComm (this is bundled with dhis-web-mobile module), then you should have rxtxSerial.so (Linux) or rxtxSerial.dll (Windows). If using the older version, check the comm.jar and the required dlls is at the right location.
3. Check the compatibility of the modem (Kannel) and (smslib). If not listed, check if it supports common standard AT command and may just work
4. If you are using SMSLib for Java on Linux with the RxTx, you can have a no response exception or gnu.io.NoSuchPortException, as if no modem is actually connected to your computer – create a simlink to the dev/ttyS20 and also do start your application (for DHIS this is catalina.sh) with the –Dsmslib.serial.polling parameter as given in this bug filing.
5. Check if you have the correct port number in the configuration. For Windows, look at the device manager and the modem. Put the COM10 as the port (COM is needed for DHIS, while not for SMSListener), while for Linux add the /dev/tty<whatever> (/dev/ttyUSB0). For linux, try running the “wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf” (without quotes) or scanModem script. This will give the modem port
6. Check the SIM memory location and add it to the configuration file. This is complex, but a Google search on your modem should help. If you don’t find anything obvious leaving it blank should likely work for your modem
7. If you repeatedly see Framing Errors, it is primarily because the baud-rate mismatch between what you have set and what your modem supports. Running wvdialconf as earlier may give you good indication of what baud-rates are supported and best for your modem. If its windows, then setting to 56000 should be safe enough.
8. Some modems supports a specialized AT command set. These are init commands and activation AT commands. You should change the manufacturer and model string. If you know the manufacturer, then it is always good to put the exact manufacturer name in that string.

Netbeans Community Testing for 7.0 starts

Netbeans has just started its Community Acceptance Program (NetCAT 7.0) for Netbeans 7.0. Basically developers who are using Netbeans as their IDE need to download latest builds and report bugs. Good experience to get involved with testing and learn more about Netbeans. Also makes some friends with community and developers at Sun Microsystems.

Helps improve the IDE you use daily!!

Go HERE: http://wiki.netbeans.org/NetCAT