Applications to calculate new auto rickshaw fare in Bangalore

From August 1st, auto rickshaw fare in Bangalore has increased. And rickshaw drivers haven’t yet updated their meters with new fare system. Government has given them three months of time to update the meter with new fare. Until then we have to rely on whatever driver says or look into the chart which most of the drivers carry.

I wrote a simple web application which calculates new fare based on old. Since it is based on math, application returns accurate fare like Rs.27.29, use your brains to round it up

www.techbangalore.com/auto

I haven’t added any style or images to the pages to make it load quickly on mobile devices. But, if you like to have it in a form of application which can work offline, Sriki has built them. He had created one for Android and one for Java, get them here.

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It’s been more than a week since I started using Nokia N900 smart phone. At the same time an android phone visited me (Samsung Galaxy S) which failed to impress! I continued using N900 & handed that device over to Santosh to write a guest review on Tech Bangalore. Since it’s too late to write a detailed review of N900, I’m just pointing out what all features I liked on this phone.

Build:

Many said it’s bulky/heavy, but I personally like the way it is built. It perfectly sits in my hands & makes it totally comfortable to use QWERTY keyboard. You will feel it’s bulkiness when you keep it in pocket, you cannot keep anything other than the N900 in your pocket!

Browser:

Almost all N900 reviews talk more about browser! Though I had an option of using Firefox (AFAIK only smart phone which runs Firefox), I liked using the default browser. Default browser is powered by mozilla technology & gives desktop browsing experience. I was really impressed by capabilities of this browser. For ex: Few days ago I wrote a simple location aware foursquare app using Geo APIs supported by Firefox. Out of curiosity I tried accessing this app from N900 & voila, N900 gave my application GPS location & my app worked perfectly fine. I had actually written the code without any intentions of accessing GPS location, all done by the browser.

Angry Birds!

Killing time in power cuts is not that easy. Angry Birds make me feel like Power, don’t come for another hour please!. Angry Birds is a simple yet very addictive game which first came on Maemo & then launched for iPhone too. It’s one of the most selling games on iPhone app store. Game is simple, just throw birds at pigs and kill them!

Vagalume:

I hugely rely on last.fm (I don’t know how many times I said that!) for music. I wouldn’t buy a phone if it can’t play last.fm radio, it is so important for me. Vagalume is a last.fm client for Maemo platform which can play last.fm radios. Unlike other last.fm clients I have seen, vagalume automatically downloads free tracks on last.fm while playing a radio. That means, it plays that track locally instead of streaming it again. One more unique feature I liked on Vagalume is that, you can enter a last.fm url & play that radio. It can be friend’s library, friend’s loved track, similar artists page…anything.

Joikuspot:

The application which enables you to carry wifi hotspot wherever you go, Joikuspot is my favorite right from the day they launched it for Symbian. Thanks to MyNokiaWorld which gave away a premium license of Joikuspot to me. If you aren’t already aware of, Joikuspot uses your GPRS/EDGE/3G connection & converts your phone into a wifi hotspot. Other devices like laptops, iPod touch, tablets can connect to this hotspot & access internet.

Android 2.2 (Froyo) has this feature inbuilt, you don’t have to install/buy any application to do it.

Tunewiki Widget:

Tunewiki widget automatically fetches lyrics of the song you are currently playing on N900′s music player. Tunewiki syncs the lyrics with the playback which enables you to sing with your favorite track. This can be ultimate karaoke machine!!

I wrote about only these many features to just to maintain uniqueness of my writeup. There are lot other things which I like on N900 like unified conversations, unified contacts, camera, email client, customizable multiple desktops, community support….and lot others.

As a special offer to Tech Bangalore readers, you will get a stereo bluetooth  headset free with the purchase of N900 worth Rs.4000. Store price of the handset is around Rs.24k. Leave a comment below to know how to avail this exclusive offer.

Norton 360 is a complete security solution for PCs, not just an anti-virus software. It includes lot of tools which makes your PC totally safe. Let’s go through each one of them in brief:

PC Security:

Norton 360 comes with all in one set it & forget it automated virus & spyware protection. This system effectively blocks viruses, spyware, Trojan horses, worms, bots, and rootkits. Norton Bootable Recovery Tool repairs, restores and boots severely infected, which is very useful when your PC is not booting because of an infection. Norton has Real-time SONAR technology which detects emerging spyware and viruses before traditional definitions are available making sure you are protected from upcoming threats. Norton firewall quietly defends against hackers from hacking your PC.

Identity protection:

Norton Identity protection securely stores your login, credit card details & makes it easy to shop at online stores. It guards against key-loggers by auto filling the forms with your credentials. Blocks phishing websites automatically to make sure your personal information doesn’t land in wrong hands.

Back up & Restore:

Norton backup allows you to back up important data securely on their servers. Backup can be setup in three simple steps:

What? – What all data you want to backup. Select all the directories which you want to backup.

Whare? – Where you want to store the backup. You will get to choose between local drive & online storage which Norton provides. Norton provides upto 25 GB of online storage based on the package you are buying.

When? – When you want to run backups. Here you can choose between Automatic, weekly, monthly or manual.

PC Tuneup:

PC tuneup comes with set of tools which helps keep your PC clean. Disk optimization optimizes the hard drive and free ups more disk space. PC Tuneup automatically finds and fixes the problems which are making your PC slow. It also has clean up utilities to take care of unwanted temporary files & cookies which improves the start-up speed of the computer.

Overall Norton 360 is a total solution with set it & forget it protection. You have to go through the setup only once & concentrate on work which you want to do rather thinking about security risks.

The most waited device by techies, Linux based Nokia N900 is finally coming to India. Device will be available at Nokia stores starting 9th June. Though the device came out around 8-9 months ago, it wasn’t available in India due to some regulations & few other reasons. Nokia N900 sports ARM Cortex-A8 600MHz processor, 1gb of RAM (256MB + 750 MB Virtual), 3G, Wifi, 5 MP Camera with Carl Zeus lens, 3.5” resistive touch screen, 32gb of internal memory & external memory expandable upto 16gb with micro SD card.

That’s all about hardware, N900 runs on Maemo 5, a Linux based OS. Maemo is open source & has a great community support & hence there are tons of applications built for N900. N900 bundles full fledged mozilla based web browser with flash 9.4 & AJAX support. So, you no longer have to visit mobile version of websites, N900 is capable of loading the full web site. User can also install Firefox on the device which enables tabbed browsing. I can say N900 is a true internet device with tight integration of social network contacts with your phonebook. I liked the concept of having unified contacts & conversations.

This device wins my heart by all it’s offerings, but priced at Rs.30639. A little disappointing point for me since there are Android based smart phones at around same price tag. But, it’s MRP, store price will be definitely less than that.

Bump Top is a 3D desktop environment which aims to provide user an interface to manage desktop which is close to real desk. Bump Top converts your desktop into a 3D environment where you can play around with the icons, pile up similar files,  and do hell lot of stuff using well defined gestures. Though Bump Top works on normal desktops & laptops, it’s more usable & intuitive on touch screen tablets. Have a look at this video which can give you an idea about Bump Top:

Acquisition by Google:

Google has acquired Bump top few days ago. There is no clear picture about what Google is going to do with it. First thing which comes to my mind is Chrome OS, next Android & then rumored tablet from Google! Definitely, Google isn’t really interested in the product & more interested in technology which it can use in it’s various products. As a result of this acquisition Bump Top will no longer be available to download, after a week.

So, this is your last chance to download and try it out if you haven’t yet done. Download it over here and have fun playing with your desktop!

Seriously, been using free anti virus since years, but my computer is still vulnerable & keep getting affected again & again. I don’t understand why they aren’t powerful. For me, an anti-virus software should be “Install & Forget”, it should be capable of taking care off all sorts of malicious bad software, trojans, spywares & let me concentrate on work!

Norton Internet Security 2010 does just what I wanted to. It takes care of all bad stuff & allows me to do my work peacefully. As you can see in the below screenshot, NIS has got really nice dashboard which tell you everything about current processes.

Clicking on the performance button shows how NIS is performing on your machine, how many issues it has found, details of the issues it found, memory/CPU consumption ..etc, everything plotted over a nice graph.

Elegant settings window allows you to configure NIS as per your requirements. Certain things which you might already know like scheduling scans, network settings, computer settings, web settings, everything comes under this. All these settings have a simple button which can turn ‘on’ or ‘off’ anytime .

We surf internet all the time. But, the fact is we find new sites via search engines (or I can say just Google?). NIS nicely integrates with Google search results page & shows whether the listed links are safe to visit or not. In my opinion this itself hugely reduces chance of getting infected!

With NIS you can have better understanding of installed applications. Norton scans every installed application & automatically finds out whether to trust the application or not & assigns proper access rights. Norton also tracks CPU & memory usage history of all applications!

Today, my friend’s came come with an infected thumb drive & asked me to format it since he was unable to fix it with the free anti-virus he had. I just plugged the thumb drive in, NIS automatically scanned the drive, found the threat!! I just clicked “Fix” & bingo! NIS took around 5 to 10 seconds to fix it & all the data was safe.

It just covers everything! I don’t think my PC would ever get affected with NIS installed on it! There’s still a lot of settings & configuration available, I just gone through few which impressed me.

Usually I download lot of stuff from internet, sometimes when I want to go to bed, it says 1hour remaining. I would be in a confusion state whether to sleep & run my PC all night or wait till it completes or pause downloading & shutdown the PC. I wished if a sleep timer functionality like in TV implemented for PCs.

Though this functionality doen’t comes with Windows XP, I found a freeware which simply does that. Auto Shutdown is a freeware with which you can set sleep time & it automatically shuts down the PC at that time! This really filled my requirement, depending on download I can set a time to shutdown. When I start my PC again, I can see completed download. The sleep timer was useful for me because of downloads, you might have different requirements to set sleep timer. If you can estimate completeion time for any process running on your PC, instead of sitting in front of it until it ends, just set sleep timer.

In case downloading, several download managers like Free Download Manager comes with an option to shutdown computer after completion of downloads. For all other cases you can get Auto Shutdown at Rabid Software.

Yeah! it’s the easiest way to set a Guinness World Record! As we all love worlds’s most advanced, most customizable browser, we can help it to set a world record. It’s new version Firefox 3 is to be released soon. Official date for it’s release is not yet announced. So, Firefox 3 is all set to make a guinness world record as most downloaded software in 24 hours. The date to download will be announced on Spreadfirefox.com. You can also pledge & give your email ID, and a reminder will be sent to your email ID too.

Let’s join hands & set this world record

Google has released Google talk labs edition with lot of new features. The most awaited group chat is implemented in this labs edition. Group chat was implemented on gmail web chat app few months ago, but it’s desktop application was lacking this feature. Following are new features found on Google talk labs edition:

• Group chat, have conferences in Gtalk desktop labs edition. I used to log in to Yahoo! for this feature before.
• Notification from other Google services orkut & calendar.
• Tabbed chatting, no hassle of new chat window, chat with different friends in different tabs.

There are also few things which I don’t like in this new client:

• Installation is different from previous client, is pretty similar to Yahoo! messenger. First downloads a 300kb installer, upon executing that will download other required files to install application. This installer may not work at office, because they might be blocking the port through which installer tries to connect to server.
• One more much awaited feature “Invisible Mode” is not yet implemented.
• Copying of text from chat window is not possible! This looks really annoying for me.

You can get Google Talk labs edition here. This is the labs edition, you can click on “Feedback” button present at bottom of application to send your feedback about the application & to improve next Google talk release.

It’s april first again, time to fool your friends & relatives. Will you again do that same kind of “Cockroach!, cockroach!” kind of fool? Let’s try something different wit computers without harming your computer. By the way you can fool anyone who is residing anywhere in this world! Pranks Online has a set of Computer Pranks to fool your friends. Following are the few popular programs they have:

Flasher:

This cool program will flash the image of your choice on your victim’s screen at any time interval you desire. The image will show so quickly and unexpectedly that your victim will wonder whether or not they really saw what they thought they saw. The possibilities on this one are truly endless. Use it to show a picture of your victim’s ex, steaming dogshit, or anything else you choose.

Bomb:

This program is a harmless way to give your victim a “bad day.” Bomb.exe can be set up with any application on a computer to simulate a program crash 5 seconds after the program has been run. The crash will feature the dreaded “Illegal Operation” windows message but does not actually crash the system or damage any files.

PC system crash simulator:

Maybe you’ve heard of the “Blue Screen of Death”, maybe you haven’t… Either way, this will FREAK you out. This is a screensaver you can install easily on any Windows PC (instructions included). When it runs, it will simulate a complete PC system crash without doing any damage. The author, Mark Russinovich, is a known PC expert from Sysinternals.com.

These are only few, you can see more application here.