Thursday, May 16, 2013

New Android Studio is based on IntelliJ IDEA

I got updates from some mailing lists about the new Android Studio tool.

According to the Google as mentioned on the Android site.  Android Studio is a new Android development environment based on IntelliJ IDEA. Similar to Eclipse with the ADT Plugin, Android Studio provides integrated Android developer tools for development and debugging. On top of the capabilities you expect from IntelliJ, Android Studio offers:
  • Gradle-based build support.
  • Android-specific refactoring and quick fixes.
  • Lint tools to catch performance, usability, version compatibility and other problems.
  • ProGuard and app-signing capabilities.
  • Template-based wizards to create common Android designs and components.
  • A rich layout editor that allows you to drag-and-drop UI components, preview layouts on multiple screen configurations, and much more.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Book Review : The Myths of innovation by Scott berkun


I got an opportunity to read the book 'The Myths of Innovation' from the O'reilly's blogger review program.

The book tried to answer the question, Why work hard.
It says that you may not be recognized as the innovator or brilliant mind in your time but there are chances that you will be recognized and the product you are working on will become the innovation of the decade.

This book has many similarity to book written by Malcolm Gladwell, The Outliers.  The book has many references to the Outliers book and also quotes the 10,000 hours theory in the later chapters.  As I have already read the book Outliers the subject which was handled by this book was not new and was more interesting for me as an after thought for Outliers, like what happens due to the innovations put forward by the outliers.  Just like the premise of the book Outliers, this book also suggests that the innovations were not just because of unique geniuses but they were backed by the environment they were developed in

This book takes a practical approach to learn the history of innovation from some examples and clearly mentions that:
Quote from p40, "The majority of innovations come from dedicated people in a field working hard to solve a well-defined problem. It’s not sexy, and it won’t be in any major motion pictures anytime soon, but it’s the truth."

Scott motivates the reader to learn the history of innovation and to learn how to start in the mystic world of innovation rightly pointing the fact that, quote, p54, "Einstein’s E=mc2, Galileo’s sun-centered solar system, and Darwin’s theory of evolution were laughed at for years by experts around the world." p58, "Experienced innovators anticipate these criticisms."

On p59, Scott says, "Many innovators give up when they learn ideas—even with dazzling prototypes or plans in hand—are only the beginning." which I felt is not logical because if someone gave up on idea no one knew that there was an innovation in making and hence there is no way of knowing this to write this sentence.  This sentence shall be mentioned as an assumption.

I was not aware of so many dimensions of the theory of innovation.  This book takes a multidimensional approach to explore the world of innovations.  On p61, it says "innovative ideas are rarely rejected on their merits; they’re rejected because of how they make people feel. If you forget people’s concerns and feelings when you present an innovation, or neglect to understand their perspectives in your design, you’re setting yourself up to fail."

Page 61, mentions the "Innovator’s dilemma" which is interestingly explained with example of Alexander Graham Bell and Western Union.  The book has many references to other books which makes the reader create a list of all books to read or explore after this book.  The apt mentions of web page and reference links is also a good resource for further reading.

The book mentions some successful companies repeatedly like p62, "Companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, HP, and Yahoo! started as small groups who dismissed the well-worn path of convincing others and chose instead to realize ideas on their own. These start-up ventures were born out of the frustration of failing to make innovation happen in larger, established businesses. Had the founders of these companies found positive responses from corporations, history might be different."

Rectangular poster on page90, "Idea Killers" is very  good to go through often and to make a permanent note for working people.

On page 93, The book explains in details the definition of brainstorming which is very interesting.
Alex F. Osborn, in book Applied Imagination, says you have three things: facts, ideas, and solutions and you need to spend quality time with each individually.

Scott consistently states with many examples like on page 136, "Truth about Serendipity" that innovation is an effort of many hours of effort and due contributions from many factors.  quote from book, "Spencer spent the next 10 years developing this chance encounter into one of the most-used appliances in the world."

Page 150, Makes us aware of ills or disadvantages of innovations.  They can be taken as alerts for planning ahead of mass execution of innovative ideas.

On page 154, towards the end of the book, Scott writes that, "This book will provide a baseline of truth to free you from the misguided yet common notions around innovation that run rampant in business and popular culture today, to prevent you from aiming at false targets because there is so much hype around creativity today that the simple truths get lost in the noise."

The major take away from the book includes:
Page 163, The simple plan
To connect many of these threads and others found earlier in the book, here is what I call the simple plan. If you picked up this book because you want to not only find ideas but bring them to reality, this is for you.

Chapter 13, How to pitch an idea and Chapter 14, How to stay motivated

The overall effect of this book is positive and has raised my energy level.  I am highly motivated to run my projects with new zeal and commitment after reading this book. 

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Technical Opportunities available to developers - Tushar joshi

My perspective for working with the Open Source software projects and communities.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

HTML5: Up and Running by Mark Pilgrim



HTML5 Up and Running by Mark Pilgrim is a concise explanation of the HTML5 specification and other specifications in the modern web ecosystem. Starting from an interesting description of the history and evolution of HTML, Mark takes us into the new world of HTML5 markup. This book is full of important external references which makes it a vital reference for HTML5 web developers. Using crisp language and clear examples even complicated topics have become easy to follow through this book.

This book equips us with many libraries and frameworks to enable us write web pages, in modern HTML5 dialect. The book follows the approach of explaining the major concepts of the specification like canvas, video, geo location, local storage and also highlights what shall be done to fall back in case the feature is not yet implemented in browser.

As mentioned in the book a web version of this book is also available at http://diveintohtml5.org/, and this web version is full of illustrations which are interesting. While explaining video markup Mark has covered enough details of video containers which are required to understand the complicated nature of the video codecs and their licensing.

The HTML5 specification is already available for all, as reference, on web but this book becomes a guide for the first time travelers and even the for seasoned ones in their journey of HTML5 world. I enjoyed reading each chapter of this book, and got impressed by the in depth knowledge of author about web standards and tools. I got many new tools and libraries to explore apart from HTML5.

The way how Mark starts with an HTML page, using popular markup currently used; and transforms it into HTML5 gradually explaining the markup elements was entertaining as well as informative.

HTML5 Up and Running by Mark Pilgrim is available at http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596806026/

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

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Saturday, July 03, 2010

Why should I attend Nagpur PHP Meet

I am member of an open source group in Nagpur.  The Nagpur PHP meet group meets every second Saturday from 4pm to 6pm.  When I ponder why I started attending these meets, these thoughts came to my mind:
  • As soon as I learnt that there is a group of passionate people who arrange meets for PHP, I was more than curious to attend it.

  • This meeting was very easy to attend as the Facebook page for the meeting told me it is a free of cost gathering, of people interested in PHP.

  • I was sure I will meet some new faces in this meets who are having same passion and interest like me in PHP.

  • Even if I spend time on PHP I know that everything cannot be learnt and there are always some parts of the technology left unknown,  such meets are opportunities to learn such unknowns as there may be some people who may have exactly spent time on those parts.

  • These meets are places where we come to know people from the same city who are willing to mix with others and share their experiences in the technology.

  • We happen to meet real people with real problems and also with the real solutions they may have found out for their problems,  this makes the meeting a synergistic event for mutual give and take.

  • Open source community is kept alive by people who learn and contribute back to the open source community, these meets are opportunities to contribute back to the open source communities, by giving presentations, workshops and sharing your experiences.

  • Meeting passionate people regularly keeps your enthusiasm ignited and you find your energy renewed and new ideas injected into your mind from all other minds.
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Friday, July 24, 2009

How to lock MacBook with keystroke combination?

I used to lock my Windows XP laptop easily with Win+L key combination. When I switched to MacBook I searched for a inbuilt option like that. It wasn't there.



After some searching I found LockTight. Now I use the key combination Shift + Option + Command + L to lock the screen when moving away from the Laptop. Now easier but atleast now I have a way to lock the Macbook.

with regards
Tushar

Switch to Apple MacBook Pro 17"

Recently I shifted to Apple MacBook Pro 17" and I am pleased with the performance. Now I use Sun VirtualBox to work in my work environment where Microsoft Windows XP is installed. I also have one virual machine with Ubuntu 9.o4 and Open Solaris.

I got Marathi language typing features by the Devnagari QUERTY keyboard option out of the box in Mac OS X which is a productive move for me.

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur