i-Robot- Endless opportunities

I-robot is a hobbyist robot! which is highly customizable and is generally used to develop path finder robot, maze solver bot, line follower bot ...............Using Microsoft Robotics Studio its lot more fun to develop robot applications for the "i-robot create". Being a Microsoft Student Partner, I had requested 'i-robot create' from Microsoft so that i could start building apps using Microsoft Robotics Studio ,see my previous article on MSRS , i.e on "how to simulate a i-robot create using Visual Programming Language", This time I will show you "how to drive a robot in real time and to sing a song (ofcourse in morse code).... using Microsoft Robotics Studio! hmmm... but as of now my laptop doesn't support Serial Port(gtg and buy a converter)! hence it takes two to three days to post the videos. Have a look at the pics :-)
*Special thanks to Microsoft and Mr. Reza(our team lead) ....

Barcamp Bangalore 7

Hi Everyone,

I will be "live blogging " the event tomorrow , here is my twitter feed www.twitter.com/bloggersrikanth , also will update this post with latest discussions and sessions going on! Those of you who are new to barcamp check out my friends post BCB7. Hope to see you @ bcb7.

Embedded Linux : Low cost Embedded Device which is similar to a computer! cost is 10k you can develop applications, watch videos..all you need is that device , monitor and a keyboard! The device is very small! Tts really great and open source community driven ! The OS is linux. It has S-video, USB .......... ! check out www.beagleboard.org . The session is still going on @ L-22,IIM-B.

Hacking Orkut/Gmail passwords :
Parashuram talked about , How Orkut Developers can have access to your gmail passwords , while you use the open social applications like i-read, emote......... see Dy-Verse. I was really amazed to see my own password hacked!!

Barcamp ROCKS!

Wifi Booster

If you have a wifi router and are not getting sufficient signal to your laptop, then download(print) the pics from this site , so that you can enhance/boost your wifi router signal with just alluminium foil, cardboard, gum and a pair of scissors....

So what are you waiting for??...... start building....

See this video :

How To: Double Your WIFI Signal EASY AND FREE! - Funny video clips are a click away

The first pic is what I have right now @ home and i am getting full signal . Before that , my laptop use to lose connection with the router repeatedly! Now its working awesome.

You can build this for your Wireless PCI card too(for your PC) so that you can get better signal reception.

Nokia Code Camp

Hi Everyone

Dear readers , Sorry, I was busy with my startup so couldn't blog for a month.....Well I am back now with full zeal and ofcourse passion! Recently had been to Nokia Code Camp by Forum Nokia at

IIIT-B , It was real fun, had free wireless internet, laptop, tea, lunch and yeah a bunch of GEEKS!As the name says "Code Camp", I thought there would be more coding than just talk but it was the opposite! :( . Although provided laptops to everyone, I used my laptop as i am kinda addicted to it, like a Girl Friend :P. So I had everything, and was just waiting for the session to start.

The Session started, again a business guy!(Prakash Sayini) In every event business people talk first and then the real thing, i mean tech happens! hmmm... will have to figure out why???.... phew.....and they gave us a document which had the agenda and all the tutorials,ppts to start developing small appl

ications for Nokia S40 cellphone. So I didnt wait for the session i.e coding session , and started browsing tutorials online.Starte

d using Netbeans 6.0 (mobile edition) , J2ME and then developed 'hello world' application for my cellphone and transfered the application to my cellphone and luckily it worked!woooot :-) If you are interested in developing a hello world app for your cellphone check out these steps ........

Pre-requisites:

• S40 based cellphone (check if your mobilephone is S40 based cellphone)
  
• Netbeans - Mobility Pack (download "mobility")
• Nokia S40 SDK (download 5th edition , feature pack 1)
• JDK 6.0(32bit) (choose-[others])

*if you dont have a S40 based cellphone ,dont worry there is another way to test your app, just read.....

Open Netbeans - > New Project - > Select mobility -> MIDP

Key in the project name and click next , next and finish!

The default file "Hellomidlet.java will be open , In your workspace change the view->editor->screen

Select "Hello", In the Properties Window key in some text in text field, this will be displayes under the label 'hello'.

Press F11 to build main project and then F6 to run..

Now to open this app on your S40 based Nokia Mobile phone , goto Documents->NetbeansProject->MobileApplication1->dist

Copy MobileApplication1.jar and send it to your cellphone memory through PC Suite or any other application

This above tutorial talks about creating a hello world J2ME application for a mobilephone , but in the Nokia S40 SDK, Start-> Nokia Connectivity Framework-> Run Emulator , You can see a simulated S40 cellphone here , so that you can test the app right here using the SDK if you dont have a S40 cellphone.

After doing all this , it was lunch time and the theory session was still going on about Nokia S40, MIDP, J2ME, Mobile media API...... by Balagopal K S.

Theory ,tutorials , softwares, SDK's :

http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/platforms/s40/

Web Search Engine's (otherthan GOOGLE!)

Google has changed the way we surf internet, Everyone needs information and the easy way to access information is GOOGLE.It has dominated the whole search engine market and online advertising. But its the perception which really matters , i mean the emotional connection with their customers is really impressive. Well as I am a startup enthusiast ,I did some research on new emerging search engines already available in the market, and found few of them which I feel, are better than google (although some of them use google api's :-p), I was really amazed :-o......... Take a look and feel free to comment :-)

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• SEARCHME

"Searchme lets you see what you’re searching for. As you start typing, categories appear that relate to your query. Choose a category, and you’ll see pictures of web pages that answer your search. You can review these pages quickly to find just the information you’re looking for, before you click through."

Links :

*About John Holland, Co-founder of Searchme
*Interview with John Holland
*Searchme blog

See their demo video:

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• KartOO
  

This is also an amazing search engine which displays the search results on a map , which shows the connection between different pages for the search keyword.Try it out, it rocks :-)

Links :
*Article on KartOO

Interesting video on Visual Search Engines check it out

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Oskope

"Oskope is a free online service developed by oSkope media gmbh in Zurich and Berlin. A great team of highly talented and skillful people worked on this project." You can search you favourite videos on youtube or a product in amazon in a unique way.... search and have fun :-)
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• Viewzi

"Viewzi is a new and highly visual way to search that brings all your favorite stuff together in one place. " There are different views where you can view the search results, "Web Screen shot view", Simple Text View, Time line view, 3D photo cloud view...... many more , go ahead and check it out! :-)

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• Quintura

"Visualization becomes the center of user experience replacing antiquated listings and Boolean strings" The search results are in form of tag cloud, and has a relation between each tag and the links are displayed when clicked on keyword.

*How quintura works?
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• FACESAERCH

"Facesaerch is an image search engine for faces powered by Google. All images (thumbnails) are provided, hosted and managed by Google. Facesaerch RSSflow visualized free available RSS feeds. All images are provided and managed by respective feed owners."

Facesaerch - Search for faces

*facesaerch blog