Reasons Why Android Phones will win the war

Apple's iPhone is definitely now the winner in the criteria of slickness or coolness.  But one of its biggest downsides is it is tied to single provider (AT&T  in US) which charges too much ($30 for its data plan in addition to existing voice plan).

From developer's perspective (at least me), developing an application on iPhone is not that fun.  First, it uses a proprietary O/S which does much control on the device.  Secondly, Objective C used in the SDK is kind of weird to absorb from a person who's used to C/C++ or Java for beginning.  Also, the SDK only works on OS/X (sorry Linux/windows, you're forgotten!).  Another biggest downside: we cannot test our developed software on a real device, unless we pay $99 to Apple.

Meanwhile, Google Android is opensource and even based on Linux, the king of opensources.  Another thing is, it uses Java language for its application development.  The SDK supports all platforms (well, except OpenSolaris maybe?).  So far, I sense very similarities between both SDKs, though (I think because both of them follow Design Patterns paradigm?).  One biggest winning point: no fees required to test our software on a real device/handset.  This will drive a lot more programmers (especially from third word countries, where $99 is beyound their reach) to develop applications.

Why Apple should be very worried now? First, a bunch of chinese/taiwanese vendors (HTC, Huawei,etc.) are jumping into the bandwagon.  So far, HTC, Huawei, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Acer, Philips, Sony Ericsson, are in or planning to join in.  If Nokia joins the group, that'll be the scariest thing Apple will have its nightmare.

Ooma slows down data traffic

It's been a month since I bought the Ooma VOIP system. It's been working fine, except with some issues, like the scout hang (need reset it). My configuration is to put Ooma hub right after DSL modem, so my wireless router is connected to Ooma hub. This is per suggestion in its manual.

I was curious to see how data traffic was affected. My nominal DSL speed is 6 Mbps, and when the router was connected directly to dsl modem, I could get more than 5 Mbps average. But when the router is connected behind Ooma, I could only get below 5 Mbps. It is not strange, as Ooma was acting as a NAT router too, hence added additional overhead.

The settings showed on setup.ooma.com (an alias to its internal IP address) look very similar to regular NAT router. The default internal IP address range it uses is in 172.27.35.*

Ports used:

Telephony:	50 - Running
DNS:	45 - Running
Web Server:	47 - Running
VPN:	356 - Running
Free:	37008

Next experiment I will do is to put packet sniffer on its "modem" port to figure out how it actually works.

How much power does a Macbook draw?

To find out how much power an Apple's Macbook laptop withdraws power, I use EZ Kill-A-Watt power meter (got it from Costco for about $28). Select "Watt" mode and connect Macbook power cord to this device.

• When the laptop is in standby mode (lid is closed) and battery is full (or at least 94% full), it withdraws 4 Watt
• With power cord detached from laptop, the power supply withdraws 0 watt
• During booting, the laptop withdraws max power, which is 45 watts
• During normal mode (casual use), in average it withdraws 27-28 watts

Linux Visual Improvements

XFree86 Font Deuglification:
http://www.tutorialized.com/view/tutorial/XFree86-Font-Deuglification-Mini-HOWTO/4558

X Window System Application Performance Tuning:
http://www.rahul.net/kenton/perf.html

It is time for Playstation 3 to prevail

Sony PS3 has been around for almost 3 years now. Recently Sony has lowered the list price by $100 and also discontinue the middle level version. With all capabilities it has, I suggest people who wants to buy either game station, multimedia center (BD player, Internet access box, etc.) pick up this box instead of Microsoft XBox360.

Some reasons I can think of:
- It has more powerful Cell processor than the old Intel Pentium used in XBox
- It comes with Blue-Ray drive
- It can run Linux
- The price is now more reasonable (recently Microsoft has also lowered XBox360)
- The now-still-beta Interactive (with 3D graphic) social networking software which can be downloaded for free. It is sooo cool! Think of a 3D Facebook :-)
- More game studios are producing games for PS3 more than ever.

To make USB devices work on VirtualBox on UBuntu

-Create a group called "usbfs" and add yourself to it.

-In terminal issue the following command:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

-In this file paste the following lines, and change the group ID according to the group ID that is shown for the group "usbfs".


# 1001 is the USB group ID
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=1001,devmode=664 0 0


-Save and close file.


-In terminal, issue the following command:

VBoxManage list usbhost

-Use the output of this command to set up the filters for USB devices under VirtualBox.