Preparations for BarCamp Delhi are under way. The date for the fifth installment of BarCamp Delhi has been set for the 4th and 5th of October 2008. Please join the BarCamp Delhi Google Group.
Archive for the 'Delhi' Category
Here are some screenshots of apps I have downloaded from the Apple App store. All the apps are running on a 1st generation 8gb iPhone that was recently upgraded to the 2.0 firmware. My carrier is Airtel in New Delhi and this post is being made with the Wordpress app for the iPhone.
21
Jun
OSSCamp Delhi SE01
OSSCamp Delhi Summer Edition kicked off this morning. There was a movie called “Revolution OS” that talked about the beginning of the Free Software Foundation and GNU. It spawned a few discussions about GNU, Linux and the various distributions built around GNU software and the Linux kernel. Interesting movie - NOT an Open Source documentary.
We then had a talk given by Prateek Saxena on Blue Print and Drafter (Code not yet available online). Very cool stuff for quickly doing some design layouts and prototypes.
After Drafter, Manu Goel gave a very interesting talk on the concept of CSS Specificity. The idea being that there are certain elements or attributes in CSS that take precedence over others. We should be able to determine what elements take precedence, hence, being able to attain a finer control over your design.
Tennyson Kaniampady has given a very interesting introduction to Ingres. Ingres is one of the oldest commercially available relational databases. Ingres, unfortunately, doesn’t have a large following in India but Postgres came from Ingres and, thus, it can be relatively easy to move from Postgres to Ingres.
Tennyson is now giving a talk on Appliances.
Update 15:45
I am trying to upload videos of the Blue Print/Drafter and CSS Specificity presentations but there isn’t enough bandwidth to upload two <4min videos.
Tennyson is discussion Ingres’ BI Portfolio. it’s a bit tough to read from the back of the room so I’ll link to the presentation once its up online.
Ingres BI Stack
- Apache/Tomcat
- Java
- Ingres 2006
- Linux
- Ingres Icebreaker
The Jasper reporting engine sits on top of the Ingres Icebreaker stack.
Update 15:52
Tennyson is introducing us to their Alfresco Collaboration Suite also built on top of Ingres Icrbreaker.
Ingres CAFE is an integrated stack of application development.
- Eclipse IDE
- Ingres Database
I just asked why Postgres shouldn’t be used instead of Ingres. Tennyson mentions that Postgres is not multi-threaded and support, plus future roadmap of Postgres isn’t clearly mapped out.
Update 15:58
Tea/Coffee Break to wake up all the food coma victims
Update 16:33
We’re back from our tea/coffee break and Prateek has given a Introduction to Ruby on Rails with a great selection of pictures in his presentation.
Update 16:36
Prateek is giving us an example of an application that he’s developed on his localhost (an Apple MacBook). It’s an online shopping cart that took 2 days (18 to 20 hours).
Update 16:52
Mir Nazim is giving a an Introduction to Artificial Intelligence in Python. Python is a 100% Object Oriented language and not just a scripting language. Python is concise and it looks like English.
We’re having a bit of trouble getting the Python console up and running on Apple OS X Tiger. Making the switch to a LinuxMint machine now but we’re having issues with the projector so time to reboot.
Update 17:01
Ok, we’re up and running and doing a quick demo of “Hello World” and now moved onto demoing an “if” statement. All of the other basic operators and data types are being discussed. Immutable Arrays = Tuples in Python. Tuples are very very fast and great for temporary arrays or an arrays containing values that never change.
Recommended Python Books
- Dive Into Python
- Bite of Python
Update 17:30
Mir is about to start Part II of the Python presentation, though, time might be a problem.
OSSCampDelhiSE01 comes to a close.
Thank you all for attending and contributing.
Update 21:48
A few of the videos I took at OSSCampDelhiSE01 are up on YouTube.
OSSCamp Delhi is just around the corner. On Saturday, 21st January, 2008 Open Source enthusiasts, users, and businesses will be gathering for a BarCamp-esque information exchange at The Indian Social Institute on Lodi Road in New Delhi.
The Apple Store India was relaunched some time back but fairly recently, possibly even today, Apple has dropped the prices on almost all products in India. The top of the line iMac offered by Apple in India (not the new 3.06 GHz one but the older 2.8GHz 24″) has been reduced from Rs. 96,600 to Rs. 83,500 and the MacBook Air (1.6GHz with PATA drive) has gone from Rs. 96,600 to Rs. 87,900. Those are some pretty substantial drops. Now if only Apple could release their most current products in India like the rest of the world.
Well, I’ve been trying for almost a whole week to get Airtel’s Unlimited GPRS service (or Mobile Office as it’s called on their site) setup. Unfortunately, all the SMS confirmation messages telling me that it is setup and will cost Rs. 499/month for unlimited usage were all bogus.
I’ve confirmed that even though my iPhone shows the “E” implying an EDGE/GPRS connection, the service isn’t really activated. I’ve used the new Airtel SIM card in my Apple iPhone (which is unsupported by Airtel) and also a Nokia E61 (which is supported). It doesn’t work on either phone. I then even tried to put the SIM into a USB EDGE/GPRS device and configure it on my Mac Mini but still no luck.
I believe Airtel’s setup process for GPRS is a manual one. That’s one of the reasons it will take 4 hours to setup the service. 4 Hours have turned into almost 144 hours and countless phone calls to both 121 (customer service) and 12118 (technical support). 12118 tells me that it’s not active and 121 sometimes tells me that it is active, other times they tell me they’ve put in a request to have it activated, and other times they’ve told me that it is active. The support on Airtel’s mobile desk is fairly horrendous as compared to their excellent service for their DSL and landline products.
In New Delhi, at least, you must send the following SMS to 121 from your Airtel phone:
STARTGPRS
I’ve heard that “AGPRS” also works but in my case, neither SMS messages nor telephone calls have actually gotten the service activated.
Once you receive a confirmation message, you can go into your settings and setup the APN as shown below:
Though, the confirmation messages haven’t helped me, it doesn’t have anything to do with the iPhone. It only has to do with Airtel’s inability to get the service fully activated. The process appears to be a two-part manual process and one service rep let it slip that only the first part has been done, hence, I’m getting the “E” on my iPhone but no actual service.
My only advice is to keep hounding them to get the service activated and, if possible, use an Airtel supported handset while asking them to activate the service. If you tell them you’re using an iPhone, their eyes will glaze over and you’ll get the ole heev-ho.
I’ll post updates as they become available.
Update: 29th April, 2008
Airtel was able to finally get it right. It took them 9 days and countless phone calls plus SMSes and a little bit of strong-arming to get them to put me on the phone with a floor supervisor but the supervisor finally got GPRS (Mobile Office) setup on my account. The access point name (APN) on my iPhone is set to airtelgprs.com. All I had to do was turn the iPhone off and back on to get it to work once the service was activated. I just hope some bonehead over there doesn’t turn the service off again …
Update: 5th May, 2008
Airtel has done it again and “automatically” disconnected my Mobile Office GPRS connection. They couldn’t give me any explanation except “the status is wrong”. Even after pressing the supervisor for an explanation, I got nothing. They’re telling me they will resolve the problem in 24 hours, an unacceptable amount of time for “automatically” disabling my service without any notice. As happy as I’ve been with Airtel’s DSL service, I am immensely disappointed with their mobile service. The incompetence continues ….
Update 2: 5th May, 2008
It took Airtel a little over 6 hours but Mobile Office GPRS is working again….for now.
I stumbled upon HungryZone which was launched by the same folks who came up with HungryBangalore. I never used HungryBangalore before but when I saw that I can get reviews of restaurants around Delhi, I had to delve into HungryZone (there are a total of 10 cities covered by HungryZone).
I was pretty disappointed by HungryZone. I could not narrow down restaurants by PIN code, area, cuisine type, vegetarian or non-vegetarian, or any other criteria. Once I clicked on Delhi, I got an alphabetical listing of restaurants all over Delhi. Almost all of the restaurants had only 1 review.
To help them out, I looked around and found a restaurant, Machan, I had been to and added a review for it. The basic information that HungryZone provides about the restaurant is a good start but perhaps some more information would be helpful.
The concept behind HungryZone is great but there’s a great deal of footwork required to get restaurants to signup and accept coupons, take orders online, deliver, etc. It’s also a great deal of work to get people around cities in India to contribute their reviews of restaurants. Perhaps, HungryZone would allow users to add a restaurant and a review about it. For example, I went to Chonas in Khan Market today and the appetizers, main course, and service service was great!! Avoid the Strawberry “Cheesecake” though.
It took some time to get the correct MMS settings for the iPhone but below is a screenshot of the exact settings to be used with Vodafone in Delhi when using SwirlyMMS for the iPhone. The same settings should work with Vodafone users in the rest of India and I would love to hear from those of you who have gotten it working. Unfortunately, SwirlyMMS doesn’t yet allow receiving MMS messages but the developers are working on adding that feature in soon.
I am looking for Perl, PHP, Ruby, and Java Programmers looking to join a brand new startup, right at the ground level, here in New Delhi. Of course, all work will be done on either Linux or OS X, so some experience with *nix is important. If you fit the ticket or know of anyone who does, please drop me a comment or an email. I’d love to hear from all of you.
04
Dec
OSS Camp Delhi2
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make the first OSSCamp in September so I’m excited to see that the folks that brought us OSSCampDelhi are organizingOSSCampDelhi2 for the 15th and 16th of December. OSSCamp is a BarCamp-esque unconference being held for and by open source software users, enthusiasts, and those interested in learning about OSS. I am planning to be there and I hope I get to meet many of you there.
