RJ's Hotspot

Google bakes Gingerbread today!

2010-12-06T08:29:00.001-08:00

After all the rumors and waiting we had for Android's next OS codenamed Gingerbread, It has been released today. A new version of ADT and the AVD and SDK Manager is also available. In order to begin development for Android 2.3 you must update both.

Here is a summary of all the new features developers will be interested to work on the new release. And to me this really sounds interesting.

Features

1. Support for SIP-based VOIP

2. Near Field Communications

3. Support for Gyroscope

4. Multiple Camera Support

5. Mixable Audio Effects

6. Download Manager

7. StrictMode for improving Application Performance

8. New additions to the UI Framework

9. Support for large screens

10. New OpenGL methods

11. Content Providers for AlarmClock, MediaStore, Settings and ContactsContract (For SIP Contacts)

12. Improvements to Location Manager

13. Storage Manager

14. Improvements to Package Manager

15. Telephony support to CDMA EVDO Rev B network type

16. Native access to Activity lifecycle, windows

17. Changes to Dalvik Runtime

18. New manifest elements such as reverseLandscape, reversePortrait , etc.,

19. New permissions for Alarm, SIP and NFC

20. New feature constants for front camera, nfc, barometer, gyroscope, sip, jazzhand (5 point multitouch)

Those who are interested in learning more, visit the android developer site from here.

Second Famous Software Award!

2010-11-17T03:52:00.000-08:00

myTranslator receives Famous Software Award. This is the second award I receive after my first product - FarmVille Timer Free got one a few days back. Been busy for a while this month and thereby unable to work on my personal products. I have completed five applications for my clients this month and they are up and running in the Android Market. Will get back with with my personal products but not in the same pace I did it for the past two months :)

Thanks, Have Fun!

myTranslator v1.0 Released!

2010-11-02T07:59:00.000-07:00

myTranslator is a translation application based on Google Translate API. Now you can Text, Email and Tweet in 58 languages.

Counter Strike Sounds v1.0 Released

2010-10-29T05:31:00.000-07:00

Sounds from your favorite Counter Strike Game. Just a simple application for all CS fans.

Droid Task Killer Elite 1.0 Released

2010-10-28T11:08:00.000-07:00

Droid Task Manager Elite is a Task Manager that allows users to terminate unwanted background services and applications to free your Android's RAM. Compatible with Android 2.0 and higher. Download from Android Market, SlideMe, AndAppStore or GetJar.

Alarms for FarmVille Timer Free!

2010-10-21T21:34:00.000-07:00

The Audio Alert (aka Alarm) feature which was only a part of the FarmVille Timer (Full Version) is now available in the Free Version too. Enjoy, Happy Farming.

myBMI v1.0 Released

2010-10-21T21:31:00.000-07:00

myBMI is a very simple BMI calculator for Android. Supports SI Units and Imperial Units. Download from Android Market, SlideMe and AndAppStore.

What's new in FarmVille Timer 0.5.5?

2010-10-21T21:23:00.000-07:00

New crop 'Candy Corn'.
Fast Scroll support for long lists.
Customizable Ringtones.
Minor bug fixes.

Major features awaiting on next release. Stay tuned.

Reflex ++ Lite Released

2010-10-12T11:55:00.000-07:00

This is my first game I've ever programmed. Reflex ++ Lite is a fun and casual game to improve your CONCENTRATION, MEMORY and REFLEX at the same time.

Features

60 Levels

3 Difficulties

Online User Profile

Online Leaderboards (Global & 24 hours)

Hand picked graphics

There are lots of features yet to come. This version is still in beta. Stay tuned! Available from Android Market, SlideME and AndAppStore.

Screenshots

Famous Software Award for FarmVille Timer Free

2010-10-11T06:01:00.000-07:00

3343 from Android Market
466 from SlideME
124 from AndAppStore
3 from PocketGear
x from Various other sources (Unavailable data)

3936 + x downloads in 25 days. Though this is not a very big number but decent for a Timer Application. This app was bestowed with the Famous Software Award from FamousWhy.com

Seems the award was given on the following criteria:

Originality, creativity and vision.

Professional appearance and structure.

Flexibility through integration across multiple-platforms.

Leadership in the software sector.

In addition the site says,
The submissions for this award are not possible, as our editors team are manually evaluate, test and review very closely the software which are honored by the "Famous Software Award".

FarmVille Timer on SlideME

2010-09-23T07:59:00.000-07:00

FarmVille Timer Free has grossed over 2000 downloads within a week of its release. Today an Ad-Free version of FarmVille Timer for Android is available on SlideMe. For those who would like to make a donation please visit https://slideme.org/application/farmville-timer. Or download it from your Android phone using SAM for just $0.49.

Thank you for your support.

Best FarmVille Timer Free Application for Android

2010-09-16T07:27:00.001-07:00

The FarmVille Frenzy hit me a fortnight ago. Since then I've been playing it for a while. Often when caught amidst of some work I found myself and some of my friends missing harvests.

So, I thought I'd be fun if I could keep track of it somehow. And to my amazement I found quiet a few FarmVille Timer applications in the Android market, but they weren't so appealing. Henceforth I decided to create my own and after a few days of work, I'm with one of the most appealing FarmVille Timer Free for Android.

So, what have I got? Hmmm, you must definitely check this out. Here the screen shots speak for themselves.

Features

Filter seeds by categories.
Check information on XP, Profit, Profit Margin, etc.,
Filter harvest by time (Today, Tomorrow, Later, Completed, etc.,)
Get more information on harvest time.
Appealing Notifications with crop icons.
Service starts at phone boot thereby keeping up with your harvest times.
Has all the seeds released in FarmVille till date.
Light weight background service, does't drain your battery.
More features yet to come...

This was a hasty release, kindly bear with me and please do give me suggestions to make life easier for all Farmers with FarmVille Timer Free for Android.

Screenshots

(Feature 1, 2)

(Feature 3, 4)

(Feature 5)

Happy farming. What are you waiting for, pick your Android and check out FarmVille Timer Free from the Android Market.

Mozilla DevDay 2010 - The best day I remember so far!

2010-02-27T20:58:00.000-08:00

I was too excited about Mozilla's DevDay when my sister told me about it. Fired up my browser and registered from the Mozilla website for the event three days ago. Started from home by 5:45 AM to Bangalore. Reached KR Market in Bangalore by 8:00 AM, the event was scheduled by 9:30 AM, I just wanted to be there in time. This seemed perfect. I got into bus number 269 to reach JRD Tata Auditorium, NIAS. I probably misread the address and reached JRD Tata Institute instead. This was a mistake, I walked into the institute for almost half an hour and couldn't find the venue. Arun, a 3rd year student from Bangalore joined me in the trail. After desperately looking for the venue inside the campus we entered the Neuroscience department. There was a kind lady, a research assistant / scientist I assume, she offered a ride to the venue. It was around 2 kms down from there.

We thanked her and marched towards the hall. I was simply excited looking at the Mozilla banners. Had a very nice feeling about it. I was expecting Rajesh to join me but he didn't show up yet. After registration we were given a Mozilla tag with ID, a cool Mozilla badge, and stationery for taking notes during the presentation.

Seth Bindernagel, Director - Localization, started off with the presentation welcoming everyone at the auditorium. He made a very important point about speed, power and scalablilty. He gave us a nice and about quick facts about Firefox. His responsibility is to make Firefox available in Indian languages and seems he's doing a great job. Firefox is available in 10 Indian languages currently. They are planning for more localized versions of it.

Since Mozilla enthusiasts were trickling in slowly Seth decided to change the schedule a little bit. Instead of Arun's Mozilla Web Standards, the stage was handed over to the drumbeat guys. Drumbeat was a combined presentation by Lucian Teo, Singapore and John Britton, NYC. John Britton threw some light about the P2PU (www.p2pu.org) initiative and his course "Mashing up the Open Web". Seemed John Britton had a flight to catch and he left a little while after the presentation.

The centerpiece of DevDay 2010 was Arun Ranganathan's Open Web (Mozilla's web standards). Arun is a Technology Evangelist at Mozilla. Arun's session stressed on the point of Open Web, having no plugins, no proprietary codecs, no constraints - just install your browser and surf the web. He showed us some nice and crazy stuff involving Cross domain XHR, HTML5, JavaScript, Canvas and Video tags, WebGL. He took almost 90 mins for the presentation and indeed it was amazing. I never looked at my watch even once.

We we a bit behind schedule but Seth was always there to keep things in place. He kicked of with his Firefox.NEXT presentation. We were really excited about the upcoming version of Firefox. We were shown some mock ups for Firefox 4 (Seth, I really liked the concept of the Application button and the Tabs on top ideas). The goal is to make Firefox's design less intrusive and more intuitive to use. A new and more intelligible design for the Add-on manger was also showcased.

I was 1:00 PM and we broke up for lunch. Indeed lunch was great. Mahiti and Centre for Internet and Society did a wonderful job organizing the entire event.

Here's a description about Mahiti from their website - www.mahiti.org,

Mahiti is a 'Social Enterprise' based in the 'Garden City of India, Bangalore'. We empower clients to reduce the cost and complexity of Information Technology through the strategic use of Free/Open Source Software.

Sree took over the stage after the lunch. He gave a presentation about Mahiti and its ventures. He ended his presentation brilliantly showing a photo of a auto rikshaw using Mahiti's banner as a rain cover. His statement for the picture was - "This is what open source software is, your end users can customize it and use it the way they like it." Every one filled the auditorium with applause.

Pranesh Prakash, CIS enlightened us about software patents and showed us the fine lines between copyrights, trade marks and patents. Vineel Reddy, indeed rocked the stage too. He made a viral video for Firefox 3.5 release and has conducted several promotional activities to promote Firefox across the globe. He indeed got a job offers from 3 companies across the globe. Vineel was an example for people are only limited by their imagination. He was a guy with a Mechanical Engineering background. He still doesn't know much of the internals about Firefox but yet, he is an active supporter and promoter for Firefox.

Then came another killer presentation form Ragavan Srinivasan, Product Manger - Mozilla Labs, I was really thrilled two Indians Arun and Raghavan for being a part of the Mozilla Team. Ragavan showed us the features of Weave, the new add-on for Firefox. Weave allows you to sync your browser history, bookmarks, passwords and open tabs with all your Mozilla installations. You can still have access to all your browser history, bookmarks, passwords and open tabs from any of your devices. You can also use it along with Fennec, the Firefox browser for smart phones. Ragavan also made us aware of Personas and Jetpack addons. Jetpacks introduces a all new paradigm of writing extensions for Firefox. Jetpack extensions are easy to write and maintain. You don't even have to restart Firefox after installing a Jetpack addon.

At the end of the day we had the Hack Session again presented by Arun. Arun began with a question related to Cross Domain XHR and a fluffy Firefox was given away. The next hack session was on the video tag. Since Mozilla is keen about their web standards they support only the OGG Theora and Vorbis encoding. You can use Firefogg to transcode your videos to OGG Theora in order to view them using Firefox. Mozilla is pretty stubborn on their standards. They surely will achieve their vision in the future. Till then web developers will have to do some extra work for the end user experience.

The wonderful DevDay 2010 reached the dusk, goodies were distributed to the participants. We got some nice posters, a Mozilla T-Shirt and a band. Finally had some nice conversation with Seth, Arun and Raghavan.

I asked Seth about how Mozilla generates revenue, he told the main stream of revenue was from the search providers like Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Baidu. Seth gave his business cards and we had some casual talk with him.

Next I talked to Arun about the Acid3 test, coz Firefox scored only a 93. He told about the inconsistencies involved with the test. The test author's failure to communicate with browser vendors. And personally he feels passing a test is not important when it was not written according to the standards. Mozilla guys knew they were doing a nice job and they didn't need approval for the things they knew they were doing well.

Finally I approached Ragavan to strike a conversation, man he was amazing. It was just a casual talk and the easter egg was, Ragavan's native is Tamil Nadu. He spoke to us in Tamil. That was mind blowing. It was 6:00 PM and the Mozilla Team had to leave. Ragavan bid bye bye to Me and Rajesh. And I finally told him - "I'm the last person you meet and probably you should remember me."

That was the end of DevDay 2010 and am eagerly awaiting for the next one. Seth, Arun, Ragavan, Lucian, John, Vineel, BB, Sree and Pranesh. Thank you guys for giving us a wonderful day. Thank you very much.

XpressResize

2010-02-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

The first public release of XpressResize is available for download from my website www.rjblackbox.com. It is a lightweight and handy utility for resizing 100s or 1000s of images in batches especially useful when you want to resize pictures taken using a digital camera. Being a java application, it is platform independent. You can get it from my download page.

My Personal Website

2010-01-25T17:02:00.000-08:00

Got my website www.rjblackbox.com up and running. I have some overhauling to do based on feedbacks I received. The site currently showcases my portfolio.

About Me

2009-09-25T01:13:00.000-07:00

I'm a kind of person who:

# Firmly believes HTML is a programming language.

# Thinks high of myself after executing a "Hello World" PHP script.

# Accuses Tomcat when it returns a HTTP 500 error.

# Demands designers should use Java in JSP, coz It's hard for me to write scriptless pages.

# Brags about Java, coz it's the only thing I know.

# Wonders how to write a DLL in CSS.

# Uses JavaScript to run Java programs from the client side.

# Argues JSON is the SON of JAVA.

# Proposes that XML should be abolished coz I don't use SAX.

# Feels multi-threading should not be used, coz programs could get entangled in threads.

# Imagines Intel Chips might look like French Fries.

# Is aware that sticky keys are enabled when you touch the keyboard after eating a cotton candy.

# Searches for screw drivers inside "Google Web Toolkit".

# Says AJAX was named after the Greek Myth hero.

# Stays away from my laptop when suffering a common cold, coz I cud infect it with "COMMON COLD VIRUS".

# Uses Norton Internet Security to secure the INTERNET.

# Tells people that Google WAVE could be used for surfing!

# Prints my IP address in the business card.

Will be continued...

RegEx Test - Swing Application

2009-08-19T08:20:00.000-07:00

If validation is part of your chore or you are a RegEx beginner, this tool could make life easier.

Download the source from here.


import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JOptionPane;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
import javax.swing.JButton;

import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.GridLayout;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;

public class RegExTest extends JFrame {
 private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
 private static int WIDTH  = 300;
 private static int HEIGHT = 150;

 private JFrame parent;
 private JLabel lblPattern, lblTestString;
 private JTextField tfPattern, tfTestString;
 private JButton btnTest;

 public RegExTest() {
     super("RegEx Test");
     parent = this;

     lblPattern = new JLabel("Pattern");
     lblTestString = new JLabel("Test String");
     tfPattern = new JTextField();
     tfTestString = new JTextField();
     btnTest = new JButton("Test");

     setLayout(new GridLayout(5,1));
     add(lblPattern); add(tfPattern);
     add(lblTestString); add(tfTestString);
     add(btnTest);

     setResizable(false);
     setBackground(Color.lightGray);
     setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
     setSize(WIDTH, HEIGHT);
     setLocation(200, 200);
     setVisible(true);

     btnTest.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
         public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
             String pattern = tfPattern.getText().toString();
             String testString = tfTestString.getText().toString();

             if(testString.matches(pattern))
                 JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(parent, "POSITIVE", "RegEx Test Result!", JOptionPane.INFORMATION_MESSAGE, null);
             else
                 JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(parent, "NEGATIVE", "RegEx Test Result!", JOptionPane.INFORMATION_MESSAGE, null);
         }
     });
 }

 public static void main(String[] args) {
     new RegExTest();
 }
}

Random Number Generator

2009-08-10T20:41:00.000-07:00

import java.util.Random;

public class RandomDemo {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
       Random random = new Random();
       System.out.println("boolean: " + random.nextBoolean());
       System.out.println("int: " + random.nextInt());
       System.out.println("double: " + random.nextDouble());
       System.out.println("float: " + random.nextFloat());
       System.out.println("int (scaled 0-99): " + random.nextInt(100));
   }
}

iEvony Invitation Codes

2009-08-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

Join iEvony and earn your free game cents to build your empire. Signup from ragunathjawahar.evony.com

Invitation Code	Added Date	Status
au9xw2ddjmlb6o6	2009-08-09 10:07:19	Active
v2xpi5xempeobww	2009-08-09 10:07:19	Active
xm66jipcw8exjk1	2009-08-09 10:07:19	Active
5wkil2niwpnqez2	2009-08-09 10:07:20	Active
qwodjnv8z7wekge	2009-08-09 10:07:20	Active
m1a6kvont0dhq7w	2009-08-09 10:07:20	Active
8x8wa7jmfytcse8	2009-08-09 10:07:20	Active
7gph29d6dm6qjcd	2009-08-09 10:07:20	Active
fka4w1bfn7twzmq	2009-08-09 10:07:20	Active
nt6cqo2juf6glp8	2009-08-09 10:07:20	Active