Here is a review of how things are progressing with my phone, with the Froyo update.

First and foremost:

Call quality

It is pretty good, except when I am trying to hold my phone in a shoulder hold.

I do have issues with some phone calls dropping, but I think it that is T-Mobile’s fault

Battery Life

I have to charge it everyday. I doubt there are other smart phones that can sustain being under heavy use and last for more than a day.

Under excessive use, like using the phone browser for 4-5 hours, while listening to music (you get the idea), the battery life is even shorter. For this reason, I now have a USB cable on my desk at work, and a car dock that charges it in the car (See more below).

Cyanogenmod Update: Battery life is so much better with this update.

Browser

Being able to look up information at a quick glance is one of the reasons I got this phone. The stock browser just absolutely kicks ass. Given the fact I have the Adobe Flash plugin (works ok, not for extensive use!) on this phone, I can pretty much access more information available on the internet.

I would like to see the stock browser supporting tabs (or switching windows using some kind of gesture). I know dolphin and xscope browsers support this, but I would like the stock app to get this feature someday.

Cyanogenmod Update: Has incognito mode. Yay!

Navigation

Google maps with turn by turn navigation is pretty sweet. I have now taken it on two trips (i did carry my gps in my bag incase my phone failed me), and it was pretty easy to use.

Email

I did not like the default mail client that came with android. I replaced it with k-9 mail for my work email. I use the gmail client for my gmail.

Calendar

I do not like the default calendar. The blackberry calendar is much more solid. I do like the sync between google calendar and it showing up on my phone automatically. I have tried Gemini calendar for a while, and have now settled on Jorte. Jorte provides what I need to know at a glance, with the weekly view.

Contact Management

Edit contacts within Gmail, and it gets added to your phone. Or the other way around. Two way sync is very nice

Market

Market works like google search with suggestions. Very easy to find what you need. Get appbrain if you find this inadequate.

Music

The stock music player is pretty basic. Sorted by Album/Artist/Song/Playlist.

I like folders, and use mortplayer.

Cyanogenmod Update: Musicmod is very nice, but I still prefer mortplayer

Podcasts

Listen is ok with the google reader implementation. Searching for podcasts in listen is confusing. I prefer to search and add subscriptions within Google Reader. Also, if your podcast is not downloaded completely, it has issues playing the podcast. I always finish download of the entire podcast before I start playing.

Camera

The camera is pretty good. The flash works well (and doubles as a flash light!).

The pictures are good enough, and at night – even better than my Canon S3IS!

Cyanogenmod: Adds 720p video shooting.

# Blackberry Pearl

## Introduction

The Pearl (a.k.a. Blackberry 8100) is a small blackberry device. It will fit in your front pocket easily. I have already lost the phone in my bermuda shorts about 3 times now. I got myself a holster to “fix” the issue.

## Pros

* Easy to use phone
* I just love the voice dialing feature on this phone
* I was apprehensive about “Suretype”, but it works well. So, typing names and everything else works!
* Decent battery life
* Sensible defaults to aggressively increase battery life (shutting off screen while calling, etc)
* Light sensor detects and switches on/off the keyboard backlight based on how dark it is
* Good call quality
* Decent set of apps to go with the phone. Google maps, google calendar (sync) and Berry 411!

## Cons
* Software has a tendency to crash on a few actions. I tend not to do that.
* Linux support is piss poor! Open up your communication spec.

# Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth Headset

This is a slightly expensive bluetooth headset, but it was worth the money.

## Pros

* Very comfortable to wear – This is now my preferred mode of talking on the cellphone.
* Decent battery life – 6.5 hours is claimed ( I have not spoken that long!)

## Cons
* None!

# PCHdTV Hd Tv Tuner Card

This [PCHdTV](http://pchdtv.com/hd_5500.html) card is a linux only card. That means that it is not supported on Windows and Mac OS X. So, I thought that it might be a good idea to support these guys

This card is supposed to get HD streams off the air. That means, it most probably will not work with your **digital cable**. Unless your cable provider leaves the channels unencrypted.

## Pros

* Card driver support is in kernel! No compiling, no nothing. Plug card in, it just works with everything. Tvtime, Mythtv and so on!

## Cons
* None yet, it has only been a day since I got it!

# Canon S3 IS

This is a 6.1 MP camera. Still have to explore the features on the thing. But I have a feeling that I will love this thing. The first picture of a human I took with this camera impressed the hell out of me. Cause, I have been known to take really really bad pictures!

# Pros

* Simple controls (I figured how to set the self timer on without messing with the manual. Hah!)
* Works with Linux! Plugged it in, and digikam took care of importing the pictures.
* Works with 4 AA batteries

# Cons
* A bit bulky, but I knew that when I was getting it. I just thought it was worth a mention!
* It been only 5 hours since I got it, I am sure I will find something to crib about.

Anyways, we released a beta on April 25th. Since then, we have about 3237 downloads in April, and 4580 downloads in May! A total of 7817 (and counting) downloads in 17 days!

Makes you feel nice, doesn’t it

BTW, this beta of EasyUbuntu supports Breezy/Dapper, Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu and X86/PowerPC/Amd64 architectures. Go on, download away!

• Learn the Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts. For example, ctrl + l takes you to the location bar.
• Setup custom keyword searches for your regular searches, it is a lot faster than ctrl + k (shortcut for search field), and selecting the search engine.
• Install the extension NextPlease for reading mailing lists, forums, etc. Highly recommended!
• Install the extension Hit-a-Hint for giving you a listing of all the links on a page. Hit a key and go to the page!

If you are using Linux, you could just use Konqueror, an excellent-fully-loaded web browser with all the above features inbuilt!

It’s called web 2.0 . It’s the new internet. New ways, and yes better ways to organize and acquire your data. RSS feeds, tagging, blogs, AJAX and whatnot .

Examples of ‘web 2.0 enabled’ stuff:

• RSS Feeds: Every site or blog has one
• Social Recommendation: Last.fm
• AJAX: Gmail started it off, everyone else is playing catch up
• Tagging: Services like Simpy or the more popular del.icio.us

It’s not that I am against new technology. I use these services everyday. I find them more intuitive to use. Yes, it rocks.

The reason i start hating web 2.0 is sites like hXXp://www.riffs.com/, hXXp://justcurio.us/, hXXp://www.shadows.com/, hXXp://www.43people.com/ (no, i will not link to them). I’m pretty sure that there are several more. And there are more coming every week. Everything seems like a copy of a copy of a copy (ironic, huh).

A more detailed, and a web 2.0 dedicated page is flock sucks . Though, the site started out against the browser flock, it’s now moved on to a anti- web2.0 stance.

Well, all I would say is choose your services by what it offers, and don’t jump on the hype bandwagon.

Here you go.. pdf

Update:

Here is a linkto the html version on Razor-X’s site.

Conky is running in the background. Neat app. Also notice that I have it tell the weather too, right there!

The way I have them configured is to give me maximum width and height when launched, by using Devil’s Pie! I have stopped using x-chat after i configured my irssi properly

The first screenshot is from Breezy, the second when i was still using Hoary.

More details on my setup later. If you want any of my config files,leave a comment with your email.

Anyways, here are the details of my Master’s thesis presentation…

2 days to go:

Converted all my diagrams in openoffice into a powerpoint, which made it easier for my advisor to make minor changes to my schematics. Worked wonderfully well, except that it doesn’t work really that well the other way around ( i mean opening a powerpoint in OpenOffice) ! Sent off my draft of my presentation to my advisor. After going over it with him, I came back with a bunch of about 50 changes to make. Phew…

The day before my presentation:

Made most of the changes for the presentation. Then, I started practising my presentation. It was kind of weird, cause I haven’t done any kind of public speaking ever since I left India (or more specifically, after Helix). After about 3 mocks with Sunil (a Phd Student in my lab), and a bunch of reorganising the powerpoint to make more sense, it was mostly ready. I also had to add a few more 3-D models to my presentation to make clear what I was trying to achieve here! I finished off most of my work at about 12 hours before the presentation. Then went to get my clothes ready. Slept at about 3:00 am with my presentation scheduled at 10:30 am in the morning.

The day: August 10th

Got up at about 8:30 am. Just 2 hours before. Then, went and met my advisor to make any last minute changes and to let him know of the changes Sunil and I made. We made a few minor changes, and that’s about it…we were all set (at about 10:00 am).

The members on my comittee arrived about 5 minutes before, and also the surgeon from UT SouthWestern. Then, at about 10:35 or so, I introduced myself and started talking.

Well, my presentation went on for about 1 hour and 15 minutes. During the presentation, the surgeon asked the most questions, and also gave the most suggestions. ( and very important, I should say… what we prototype will be evalutated by surgeons!!). I managed to address most of the issues pointed out with my design to the surgeon (and the rest of my commitee), and I was quite surprised that one of my committee members actually said that he doesn’t care about the math, and that I should address most of the issues raised by the surgeon! There was a nice buzz about what I had worked on, and everyone was really enthusiastic with my work!! That probably explains the lack of difficult questions at the end (although, I had gone over a string of questions with Sunil the day before! ). They also recommended that we patent our work. We were also invited to UTSW to give a talk on the same!

So, it ended off great, and looks like my work has laid a good foundation to future research!! It’s good to know that you are doing some pioneering work (from one of the members of the committee) !!

Finally, they recommended to add in a lot of documenting, and the surgeon also offered to help in this process! I am going to complete the documentation process in the Fall Semester( hope to finish in about a month or so). And after I do that, my Master’s program would have been completed, and I will be done.

Also, been reading more of Godel, Escher and Bach. Will have a section devoted to this on my blog. That book too, needs a lot of re-reading. I think I need to get my math books out!

In other news, my life is still following the “new day, same old bullshit” mode! Nothing new to see here, move along people!