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Android Apps: ShopSavvy

Abhilash — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 11:19:27 +0000

Having acquired an Android phone recently, the Samsung Spica, I have obviously been spending a lot of time filling it with the choicest applications from the Android Market. I install many applications every day and remove most of them after checking their utility. I also spend a lot of time checking various top 10, top 20, top 50 or top xx lists of Android application posted all over the internet. Surprisingly, I have found very few places that include this amazing application called ShopSavvy. Which is again surprising since it was the winner of the 2008 Android Developer Challenge. It looks like people have forgotten the utility of this really simple to use but powerful application.

ShopSavvy allows the user to use the onboard camera of their Android phone and scan the barcodes on products. It then displays the details of that product and allows the user to read reviews and check pricing for the same product online, as well as in the local stores by using the location of the user. Products are added continuously to the ShopSavvy database and most of the time you can get all the details. Screen shots below.

ShopSavvy home screen.

You can either scan the code directly using your camera or you can enter the numerical code using the keypad. The barcode scanner is pretty good, although, low light scanning is a challenge and it doesn't seem to handle long strings.

After a successful scan, the product details are displayed along with the lowest online price and also the lowest lowest local vendor price. There are also links for Reviews of the product.

ShopSavvy displays many online vendors who provide a price for this product. You can choose any of the options and go to the vendor's website to buy the product if you want.

The app can take you directly to the listing of the vendor which you chose and complete your transaction if you want to.

The Reviews page gives many user opinions on the product. I don't know where the reviews comes from.

The app works really well. Its great to be able to check the pricing difference when you are in the mall looking at stuff wondering if they are fleecing you with their price. The only problem I have with it, is that the pricing is in USD. There should be a converter to INR for it to be more useful in India. Products sold in India do show up after the scan, and you can also convert the currencies in your head and come up with an estimate, but local search is what will really make this a killer application in India.

Until then it is still useful and I look forward to testing it in a real shop when I go out shopping next time.Similar Posts

Review: Samsung Galaxy Spica

Abhilash — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 04:50:14 +0000

The Samsung Galaxy Spica (GT-I5700)

The Samsung Galaxy Spica Android based phone has just been introduced into the Indian market adding to their existing Samsung Galaxy model which is also an android phone. Currently these are the only two Android based cell phones offered by Samsung here. Both the Galaxy and the Galaxy Spica are aimed at being affordable Android devices.

The Spica was slated to be the younger brother of the Galaxy, but the spec sheet makes it look like competition instead. I have been using mine for about ten days now and am quite satisfied with it.

Body & Design

The Spica is a nice slim phone with no slide out keyboard and is therefore slim. The dimensions are 115mm x 57mm x 12.9mm (LxHxW), and it weighs 120 grams which is slightly less than the iPhone 3G. In these dimensions it accommodates a 3.2 inch TFT LCD capacitive touch screen and dedicated buttons on the front for call pick-up and end, Menu key for applications, a Back key, a dedicated Home key and also a dedicated Search key. In the centre of all these is a 5 way d-pad for navigation. While a lot of other touch screen phones are doing away with most of these keys, Samsung has retained these and in my opinion they are a lot more productive than relying completely on touch.

The top of the phone has the micro-usb port hidden behind a small rubber flap and a standard 3.5mm headphone jack for the hands free or stereo headsets.

The left side of the phone only has the volume up and down button. On the right side of the phone you have a dedicated phone lock button (which seems to be common to a lot of Samsung phones) and a dedicated camera button. The phone can only be unlocked with the lock button. A major oversight in terms of the button here is that there is no backlight for them, which can make the phone a little inconvenient to use in the dark. Although in most cases the light of the screen is enough to see the buttons below it.

The back only has the 3.2 Megapixel camera (no flash) and the cut-out for the speaker.

The back of the camera is very plain, and only features an inset, 3.2 Megapixel camera and the cut-out for the external speaker. The Samsung logo is horizontal giving it a more camera look when you are using the device for photo or video.

The entire back cover is removed to access the battery. The cover comes off easily and locks securely when put back with no jiggle room. Build quality is very nice and the matt finished surface gives a nice feel to the phone too.

Apart from the battery, the back cover also reveals the ports for the SIM card and the micro-sd card. The SIM slot is also like the memory card slot, the push to release, push to insert kinds, and makes life a lot easier than the sliding kinds. The Spica supports a maximum of 32gb of external memory via micro-sd card.

Display

Before the Spica was released in any market (in November 2009) there were a lot of rumours about what kind of display it would have. The most prevalent one was that it would feature a 3.2 inch AMOLED display. Considering the price of this device, that seem highly unlikely. The Spica now sports a 3.2 inch TFT LCD capacitive touch screen with 65k colours, with an HVGA resolution of 320 x 480. Various experts have rated the Spica’s display very highly. As a person with first hand experience, the display is excellent and the touch-screen extremely responsive. Samsung has always been known for it display technology (mobile or otherwise) and this device is no exception. You will be hard pressed to find a problem with the display.

Hardware & Software

One of the main reasons that I bought the Spica was its processor. The Spica features a 800mhz processor which makes all the applications run like a breeze, even if you have multiple applications open in the background. The Spica has 200mb of memory available for user installable programs from the Android Market and also has 128mb or RAM, which seems a little less. However the 800mhz processor makes up for this slight downside.

The home screen, customized with my own favourite widgets. There are 3 screens available for all that you want to put on them.

The Spica runs Android 1.5 and an upgrade to 2.1 is expected in April 2010. The interface features no customizations (like the Hero) and is fairly standard with the usual pre-installed applications with more to be installed from the Android Market. Being a google phone, the contacts, calendar and mail can be easily set up to synchronize with your google account online and remain there as a backup. No software required for that activity. In fact the supplied PC Studio in the CD is pretty much useless with this phone.

Since the phone doesn’t have an external keyboard, Samsung has provided 3 different on-screen keyboards in the Spica. The standard Android keyboard, which work best for use in landscape mode, a Samsung keyboard, which can switch between 12 key, 20 key and full qwerty. The 12 key with T9 is perfect for single handed operation in portrait mode and a Hindi keyboard for those who would liek to send messages in Hindi. Both English and Hindi text can be combined and sent in the same message.

Connectivity

The Spica leaves no stone unturned in the connectivity section. The Spica is a quad-band GSM device and also supports bands 900 and 1200 for 3G, apart from the usual GPRS/EDGE capability. The phone also has an inbuilt GPS antenna (the GPS connects in about 30 seconds when outdoors), bluetooth and WIFI. However, the phone doesn’t currently support file transfer or sync via bluetooth, and is expected to get those with the 2.1 upgrade. On the up side you can use a bluetooth stereo headset to listen to the music.

Multimedia

The Spica is the first Android phone to natively support DivX videos and DivX streaming. Apart from this it has a fully functional music player very different from the iPod family interface but just as easy to use. Widgets on the home screen can also access the same music player and give you instant playback from your playlist. A YouTube application is also provided and works great, playing videos in high quality unless you specify them to be played in a lower quality.

The camera capabilities are acceptable. I am not too interested in the camera when I buy a phone, since I believe that a phone need not have an amazing camera. So the stills and the videos (3gp) are fine bu not exceptional.

In Summary

This phone is great value for money. Costing between 12000 and 13500 rupees depending where you buy it from, it has a snappy processor, a bright and crisp LCD, a very responsive touchscreen and all the multimedia features that you can use. Coupled with the applications available in the Android Market, you can extend the phone’s capability to even greater levels.

On the down side, no backlight on the buttons (wanted), no bluetooth file transfer (can do without) and the android on-screen keyboard could use a little more improvement to match up to the iPhone’s on-screen keyboardSimilar Posts

Gmail Goes Social With Buzz

Abhilash — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:05:58 +0000

Google revolutionized the email arena with the launch of Gmail a little over 5 years ago. However, in the recent past other services like MSN and Yahoo have been adding features that Google has forgone or not really been interested in integrating in to the Gmail platform. The last few weeks we have all been reading about Gmail allowing status updates. Google has gone and done one better and enabled Buzz in Gmail accounts.

Google Buzz is more akin to the kind of social update sharing and time-line visibility that is offered by social websites and comes close to the functionality offered by Google Wave. It is definitely much more than just status updates. Buzz integrates your details from your Google profile page and displays the people whose updates you are following and also those people who are following you.

Right after login a splash screen informs you about Buzz and ask if you want to enable it. If you do enable it (Why wouldn't you?) the Buzz link appears below your inbox link.

The main Buzz updates area. Looks familiar doesn't it? Enter your status in the top area and your connections will start to see them in their Buzz and can then comment on them. Images and web links can also be entered. Buzz will also pull images from the linked page and allow you to use them in your update.

People who are following you and the people who you are following can be seen with the links provided. Your Buzz update can be public or shared with selected poeple.

The Buzz update can be commented on, Liked/Unliked and also emailed to someone. All from the same area.

Add various sites to your buzz profile. Looks like sites are picked up from all your google products like analytics or apps.

I like this a lot more than I liked Wave. I really didn’t get the point of Wave. This is more useful in my opinion. Integrated into Gmail (which I access a hundred times a day), just the right amount of functionality to share your thoughts and interesting links and the power to work with images directly in the update, not to mention the commenting by contacts, makes Buzz a great addition to Gmail.Similar Posts

Androkkid for Windows Mobile

Abhilash — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:15:09 +0000

I use a Windows Mobile. To be more specific, I use a Windows Mobile 5 device branded by the now bankrupt i-mate. These days I just tell people that I have an HTC seeing as a lot of the younger folk don’t seem to have heard of i-mate. Coming back to the fact that my i-mate K-JAM runs Windows Mobile 5.0, it tends to get a little boring at times. Getting a new device at this time is not really appealing to me since the kind of smart phones in the Indian market are quite lackluster.

So, from time to time I wander among the interwebs and see if there are any new gimmicky freeware that can spruce up the old interface of my WM5. On one such excursion I came across Androkkid by SimoSoft Projects. Androkkid is not just another WM skin. Coded completely in .NET, Androkkid gives me the ability to have the Android interface on my less than capable WM5 device. I have only really tried Android phones in a showroom for a short period of time. Androkkid does a fairly commendable job of giving me the same experience. Which is commendable because of the fact that it is running on a device clocked at 195mhz and very limited amount of memory.

Here is the main screen after Androkkid loads. This isn't the default screen. This is the one with the look and feel of the Hero's interface.You can see 4 widgets on the screen that I put there. The top bar was misbehaving so I disabled it.

If you are familiar with the Android interface, Androkkid will be a breeze for you to use, and if you have never used an Android device before, this will be a good place to learn without breaking anything. The interface features a lot of the Android functionality that we have been hearing about like multiple home screen and widgets. You can setup Androkkid to use the simple Android interface or alternatively the HTC Hero interface. The widgets can be dragged and placed anywhere in the screen and removed by moving them to the bottom bar. You can also choose to use the Androkkid top bar (which looks like the Android top bar) or the standard WM top bar. There are also a lot of community provided themes and widgets available online to try and use.

This is the "All Programs" menu that slides up from the bottom. All the programs currently installed in the system will show up here.

Androkkid currently only works in portrait mode but the folks at SimsoSoft are working on making this a better offering. The notifications are a little difficult to access since the home screen sits on top of it all. The only problem that I faced was that every time that I enable the Android top bar where all the system icons appear, the whole interface starts flashing and flickering. Apart from that I have really liked the implementation. The other thing that needs to be fixed is the way that the icons look in the All Programs area. They get a very jagged look and really spoil the whole experience.

So if you have an older WM5 or 6 device and want to see it look and feel like new, give Androkkid a try.Similar Posts

Carrying Out Batch Actions in digiKam

Abhilash — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:00:12 +0000

I have written about digiKam in the past. That was more of an overall review of a great piece of open source software. Recently, I have had the opportunity to use the individual features of digiKam more in detail. One of the features that I use most frequently is “Batch Editing”. Honestly I used to use Phatch for all my batch editing needs until a few weeks ago. However, since the time that I have started using digiKam for my photographic workflow needs, i find myself using Phatch less and less.

The benefits of using a single program for photo editing far outweighs the need for separate specialist software for each activity, (which is why I also wonder why Adobe Lightroom is not a part of the standard Adobe Photoshop package to start with). But lets forget about non-free software for the time being and get back to digiKam. The images to be worked upon can be selected from the image library itself.

The batch editing module is pretty powerful. As you can see from the screenshot below, you can specify a number of actions to conduct on the set of images that have been chosen. The batch editing screen provides all the settings in a simple to understand and easy to configure interface. Apart from choosing the actions you can specify the target folder for saving the edited images and you also have the option to specify the settings of all the chosen actions.

The difference between using digiKam and using Phatch is that digiKam provides the option to carry out other editing actions on the images before carrying out the batch actions. There are many actions available in digiKam that cannot be carried out in batch. Like colour correction or croping a particular area of the image. The actions provided in the digiKam batch action list are also only the kind that you would only carry out in batch.

The actions are carried out in a very verbose manner (like most open source software) and the results delivered quickly. digiKam is an active developed piece of software and rivals commercial software like Adobe Lightroom in functionality and features. Having used both I see no reason to spend money on Adobe Lightroom when a quality software like digiKam is present.Similar Posts

Starting my own Photo 365

Abhilash — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 07:24:53 +0000

Update: The photo blog is up and running!!! You can visit it here or use the menu on the top of the page to go to the Photo Blog. The concept is slightly changed though. It’s no longer a 365 type of project, rather more of a One Photo a Day kind of project.

The time is now ripe for me to commit to a project that will require me to take one photo every day for the next 365 days. Today is the 31st of December 2009 and I plan to take the first of the 365 at 12:01 AM on the 1st of January 2010.

This is not a new year resolution since I have never really made any in the past either. This is a project and I hope I don’t cheat with the dates on the pictures that I take.

This project will finally give me an opportunity to put up that photo-blog that I have always wanted to get started with. I don’t want to do this via flickr or the like because I want my 365 displayed my way and not theirs. Besides, navigation in flickr is the pits. I have not seen worse.

I also hope to use the photo-blog for other projects and trials as well. The 365 will start off on this blog for the time being. Once I have finalized the design for the photo-blog, I will transfer the images there.Similar Posts

Working on your Holiday Photos with Digikam

Abhilash — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:51:12 +0000

This is the holiday season and you expect to take a lot of photographs. If you are not planning on taking a lot of photographs, you are at least planning on taking more photographs than you usually take. Just past the new year you would probably realize that you have a lot of photographs and not so much time to work on them, especially if you are in the “occasional photographer” category. The number of photos that you end up collecting can be huge and working on them can be a very daunting process.

However, you can simplify some of the post photography activities by using digiKam. digiKam is a free photo-management application that is available for Linux, Windows and Mac. While there are other photo-management tools available, both free and commercial (F-Spot, Lightroom, Picasa), I found digiKam to be the one that offers the best features of the lot, especially for a free program.

The digiKam interface is very simple and wont leave you looking for functions like Lightroom sometimes does. There is hardly a learning curve. digiKam not only helps you organize and arrange the tons of photos that you may have on your hard drive, it also allows you to do quick editing work on the photos before helping you share them online through various popular services like Picasa or Flickr.

The editing options in digiKam are not just for beginners but willl also serve the advanced users well. digiKam also supports over 1100 digital camera models to help you detect and import from those cameras on connection. GPS information can also be added to the images using GPX files that are generally generated by GPS devices or tools.

The screenshot tour below gives more information on various screens and tools that are available in digiKam.

The Library lists all the folders in the watch list. The folder to watch can be specified in the program options. The thumbnails are shown on the right with image information that can also be chosen from the options.

The “Image” menu in the library allows you to carry out actions on the selected images. You can add tags, metadata, geolocation information etc. to the images that you have selected. You can also use advanced tools like the “Find Similar Images”.

The “Export” option in the library allows you to transfer your images to all the popular online services like Flickr, Picasa or Facebook.

The “Tools” menu in the library allows you to carry out more advanced actions on the images that are selected in the library.

Using “Queues” you can carry out multiple changes to a batch of images. This screen allows you to choose the images, the actions and the settings for the actions to be carried out on the images. Just ”Run“ the queue to carry out the changes.

The Light Table is a really useful tool in case you have multiple images of the same subject. Using the LIght Table you can quickly compare (side-by-side) similar images and choose your favourite ones. Zooming and panning is synchronized to make the task easier for you.

There is a full gamut of color adjustment and enhancement tools available in the “Color” menu to apply to any selected image.

The “Filters” menu allows you to add slightly more advanced effects to your selected image.

The “Enhance” menu lets you take care of the commonly found errors in any image like Red-Eye and Hot-Pixels. You can quickly apply corrections to images here.

Having used other photo-management tools on both Linux and Windows, I find that digiKam is as simple to use a tool as you can get. Add to that the advanced editing and the export options and you have a one-stop-shop solution available to you at no cost. You can always use the GIMP if you need to go more advanced.

Also, the colour scheme of the interface is changeable.Similar Posts

Switch from Windows to Linux

Abhilash — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:38:33 +0000

If you are considering switching from a Windows only or a Windows & Linux combination desktop, then this article may be of interest to you. I have gone from a Windows only to Windows + Linux to an only Linux laptop in about a year and a half and am now comfortably surviving without Windows at all. I am sure that other users like me can do this too without a problem.

What does “user like me” mean? This means that you use your computer for any or all of the below mentioned uses.

Watching movies in various formats (avi, mpeg, wmv etc)
Listening to music in various formats (mainly mp3, some .ogg)
Browsing the internet extensively for visiting sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and basically everything else.
Watching videos on the internet.
Playing flash games on the internet.
Chatting via instant messenger services like MSN, Yahoo, GTalk.
Constantly checking your email (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo or others)
Storing and cataloging the photographs that you take with your digital cameras.
Editing images before you upload them to various online photo sites like Flickr, Picasa, JPGMag etc.
Downloading large files from the internet via torrents
Creating and maintaining one or more blogs.
A little bit of html, css, php code tweaking required to keep your blog looking nice.

I am usually doing one or more of these things when I am using my laptop. I thing I have covered most activities that are done by most computer users not counting people who use their computers for very specific functions.

Moving from a Windows only system to a Windows + Linux system was not a problem for me. I was comfortable with Windows and Linux, Windows for multimedia and Linux for everything else. However it is only recently that I have moved to a Linux only system and chucked my Windows Vista installation. All the tasks mentioned above I can now do on my Linux box and there is a lot more for me to discover in terms of the sheer number of apps that are available for a Linux system. The only thing that was making me retain my Windows Installation were the proprietary applications that came with things like my SLR Camera and also to some extent my Canon printer.

However these restrictions no longer hinder me as I have been able to replace proprietary applications with free open source ones and hardware manufacturers are also supplying Linux drivers for their systems more actively mainly due to the advent of Ubuntu in my opinion. I use Linux Mint which is also an Ubuntu derivative. The only hardware that I currently don’t have full support for on my Linux system is my Windows Mobile smart phone. However I am halfway there and it shouldn’t be too long before that is done too.

So if you were thinking that switching to a Linux only system but were concerned about how you would continue doing what you have been doing so far, you need not worry about that. Hey, you can even make your Linux installation look like a Windows installation if you want. I am quite sure that you really wouldn’t want to though.

As for the applications you can use for the tasks above, here are the ones I use.

Watching movies: Totem and VLC Media Player
Listening to music: Rhythmbox
All things on the internet: Firefox and Chrome Beta
Instant messaging: Pidgin which allows you to log into all networks at once
Email: Thunderbird
Photo storage and management: Picasa for Linux. There is also FSpot which is popular tool for this
Photo Editing: The GIMP in place of Photoshop, Phatch for batch editing
File sharing: Transmission
HTML/CSS: Bluefish Editor

Similar Posts

#!CrunchBang Linux Screenshot Tour

Abhilash — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:47:44 +0000

If you are looking for a distribution of Linux that is light and quick but still based on the familiar distribution of everyone’s favourite Ubuntu, I recommend that you give #!CrunchBang Linux a try (#! stands for CrunchBang). CrunchBang Linux cuts through the bloat that people say has crept into Ubuntu and other Ubuntu based distributions (like LinuxMint which I use) and provide the user with a lightweight and speedy yet functional Linux box that keeps the promise of making your Windows user friends jealous with its customized appearance.

CrunchBang Linux features the OpenBox window manager and a highly configurable PCManFM file manager. The aim is to keep things running fast and light and the interface follows the same criteria. Conky is also installed by default and is the only thing on the desktop apart from the wallpaper. While the distribution lacks any of the bells and whistles like compiz effects, it really impresses with its speed and simplicity. If you want a simple Ubuntu, CrunchBang is your answer.

Here are a few screenshots from a VM installation.

The login screen is simple and allows you to change your session to Gnome or KDE is installed

The default desktop has no wallpaper. I put this one since it looks nice. Conky is visible on the desktop and can be configured from the main menu. The bottom of the screen holds two application trays one for each desktop. You can switch between the desktops by clicking on it. The date and the network icon are the only other items visible. No desktop icons are present.

The main menu appears on right click and provides access to all the programs and places on the computer. This is the only menu accessible from the desktop.

The flie manager is called PCManFM. This is the default file manager in LXDE and has been incorporated into CrunchBang.

Here you can see 2 programs each on the 2 desktops. CrunchBang comes pre-installed with all multimedia codecs and flash.

Terminal apps gets a separate menu listing and also the help for the same.

CrunchBang is available from the website in standard (620mb) and lite (427mb) versions for both 32bit and 64bit computing.Similar Posts

Minolta 50mm f1.7 Lens

Abhilash — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:51:00 +0000

I have been looking to get my hands on a 50mm prime for my A300 for some time now. I wanted to buy a brand new one that Sony has on their web site. Unfortunately it is completely beyond my budget. On top of that, my standard kit 18-70 lens started acting up. The focus ring was getting stuck halfway in the cycle and the camera motor was not able to turn it full cycle. What was even worse, was that Sony in India does not provide repair facilities for the Alpha system. They only provide a 3 year replacement warranty for products bought in India. Unfortunately mine is bought in Canada.

In Mumbai, Fort is an area where you can find photography equipment sellers and repairers all along the D.N. Road. While they too primarily cater to Canon and Nikon in SLRs, they do have other brands and can help with repairs depending on their mood. Some of them can be quite irritating and show a lot of attitude. It’s best to avoid them.

After meeting with about 5 camera shop guys I was able to find a guy who sounded very confident about the fact that he could fix the lens. I left it with him. While walking back to where my motorcycle was parked, I started asking all the camera shops that I had not been to whether they had a prime lens for the Sony, either a Sony or a Minolta. I found one shop that claimed to be in business for the last 85 years. The people in the shop seemed a little more knowledgeable about Sony/Minolta and also had used Minolta/Sigma lenses for Sony. After rummaging through their store room in the back for about 15 minutes, they brought out 2 Minolta lenses and 1 Sigma lens for me to look at. The Minolta lenses were the 50mm f1.7 and an 18-35 zoom. The Sigma was also a zoom.

I obviously tried out the 50mm first and was very happy with the way it worked considering that it was quite old. Fast, bright and compact. The other lenses were not that much fun and would require a lot of cleaning since they had dust and fungus in them. My camera didn’t even detect the Sigma. I bought the 50mm since I really needed a replacement lens since the 18-70 was out of commission. Everyone on the various forums told me that this was the lens to go with. I listened to them.

The lens cost me Rs.5400 (about USD 117) which was cheaper than what it was going for on ebay Hong Kong and ebay US. The lens didn’t have the lens caps, so I bought them on ebay India for basically nothing. Here is the lens.

The front of the lens. The glass is clear but the body shows the age

The mount side. From this angle you can probably see the age of the lens.

My first lens with a meter. It even has a marker for IR focusing offset. IR photography here I come!

See the wide open aperture? The lens also has a built in lens hood which you would probably miss if you dont have a manual. For all practical purposes however, the hood is quite useless and an external hood is better.

Sample images are over at my Flickr page.Similar Posts