Thejesh GN

A Blog, A Website and A container for all my views with excerpts from technology, travel, films, india, photography, kannada, friends and other interests. I am Thejesh GN. Friends call me Thej

Archive for June, 2010

Three requests to Google India regarding Android

Posted by Thejesh GN On June - 18 - 2010

I am back from my first ever Bangalore Android meet-up. I should say I was impressed with the turn up on Friday evening. Here are the questions that I asked as a developer and user.

1. Support for Indic fonts and IME
I use Nexus one which doesn’t have Indic support (2.1 update 1). I am surprised see even Motorola Milestone and Samsung Galaxy don’t have Indic support :( How can somebody release smart phone in India without Indic support? I am not sure if hardware makers have enough resources to implement this, but Google has. So Google please implement this. I want Kannada on my Nexus One. Untill then my web experience is not complete. Please go vote for this feature.
[Google's Rep] Noted. [/Google's Rep]
[update] Spoke to few Samsung guys. They have devanagaari support coming soon. Other languages will be added very soon. [/update]

2. Access to Indian Developer to Sell Apps on Market
Very important if you want quality apps to come from India. If Paypal can work in India legally whats the problem with checkout?
[Google's Rep] Noted. Working on it. Cant promise dates. [/Google's Rep]

3. Froyo, So when are we getting Froyo?
[Google's Rep] In a week or two [/Google's Rep]

Not exactly the answers I wanted. But something is better than Nothing. Kudos to organizers and Google India reps for starting BlrDroid.

Going down the hill

Posted by Thejesh GN On June - 16 - 2010

Going down the hill is easy and fun. But how ever high speeds on the bike is dangerous if you are not careful. This time when I was coming down from Nandi, I was less conservative. My average speed was 25.93. Its nothing great but I reached 50kmph at a point and it was

I will try for faster descent next time. Cross 30kmph mark at least.
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Android applications for developers

Posted by Thejesh GN On June - 2 - 2010

When I am traveling, I usually carry my netbook to check the statuses of my servers, check log files, upload files and very rarely to edit too. Ever since I got my Nexus one, I have been trying to do as many things as possible on my android phone Nexus one. There are great free applications to achieve all these and probably more.

1. AndFTP is a FTP/SFTP/FTPS client for Android devices by lysesoft. You can use device menu to rename, delete, copy, set permissions and create folders. As well you can upload and download files. You can even upload/download complete folder. Its easy to setup, remembers the settings and works really well.
It can also list the files by name, size or date of creation. It can also open files (HTML, MP3, Text, Video, …) on device or you can send files (as email attachment, bluetooth, …) for device browser.
It provides FTP (File Transfer Protocol), SFTP (SSH’s secure File transfer protocol) support and FTPS (Explicit FTP over TLS/SSL). It supports both active/passive FTP mode support. Its FREE.

2. AndroidVNC is a Google Project available for free on android market. Its a fork of tightVNC viewer. VNC is an open protocol for remote controlling computer devices. If you are on Ubuntu (just enable the Remote Desktop in System-> preferences) others can run any possible VNC server. Once you connect, you can control your desktop from your phone.

You can zoom in to any area using buttons on the screen (no multi touch support) to act on it. Its very useful when I am in a meeting and I want to access my computer. I even use it while giving presentation as a remote control or wireless mouse. It works perfectly fine when you are on same WAN or LAN. When you are on edge its slower (well Internet connections in india are slow). Google code site also has a comprehensive user documentation and also FAQs.
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