Hello tech.geniuses and the world at large. Thank God it’s Easter, more significantly as a reminder of the purpose of the season as it relates to the destiny of mankind, but also the respite the holidays provide from the rigors of everyday Lagos commuting. Providing quality time to sit and put together thoughts which I’ve had swirling in my head for many many weeks now, transformed by numerous events which have occurred in my daily routines and the world at large. Finally, I present to you a mash-up of gimcrackery and airheaded cerebrations coming forth from yours truly in the form of – Chink in the armor.

Being a relatively newcomer in the Android world, a noob saibot, I believe going by the Android community slang, I’ve tried to put together a story of my journey so far. It all started while I was dancing to Joey Tempest’s Final countdown in the bathtub and my Nokia N97 mini phone dropped with a ghastly thud, but I don’t intend to dampen the tone of this write-up with the grim story of the giant turned dwarf. Rather I’ll start from somewhere charmingly simple and serene.

Welcome to Midgard, a quotidian realm characterized by the ordinariness of mere mortals, separated from Asgard, the realm of gods by Bifrost and even lower than Jotunheim, the land of the giants. It’s far beneath the far more alluring higher lands of Asgard – the home of the true gods, where dwells the insanely powerful, the glamorous and the order of the kingly, yet idyllic this middle realm is. I want to call it the realm of opportunities, what am I quipping about you wonder? It’s the plane of the mid-range smartphones.

What’s with the theme of this write-up? It’s the Chinese invasion of this realm particularly in our local environment! How easy would it be for you as a tech.genius to proudly hold out a chinco phone in public, potentially taking in a chink in that all so precious armor which is your techie image?

Help! There’s a chink in my armor!!!

I fortuitously (my damaged N97 mini, being cash strapped and uncharacteristically walking into a phone shop just to ask for prices on android phones in stock) got a Tecno N3 without much premeditation and I discovered it wasn’t all bad, might I dare say it was an interesting experience.

On the earlier question, would you take a chink in your armor (not applicable to Asgard gods – Odin doesn’t rhyme with Ody just by chance )? I did and I got mixed reactions, and usually with my closer friends this was the usual pattern of conversation:

Me: I use a Tecno phone

<Slight pause, before friend gets a chance to respond>

Me: it runs the most widely used version of the Android OS and I can do some cool stuff on it.

Friend: Uhhh?? What??

Me: <long epistle on the uniqueness and freshness of the android experience>

Tecno N3 Dual-SIM Android phone

Now we talk about flagship phones for major phone manufacturers, given the marketing push for the N3 which runs Gingerbread 2.3.5 (cool soccer advert on supersport, really big billboards and its currently splashed across the Tecno website homepage), personally I might laughably consider it to be a flagship phone for Tecno, well until the N7 came around. Is it that good a phone? I’m tempted to say yes given its price. I picked mine for N12500 on an evening I wasn’t really thinking of buying a phone. It’s sleek, with a 3.5 inch screen with cheap plastic parts and a 3 MP camera. Having partaken in the death/extinction and fossilization of the Symbianosaurus, I needed a taste of that Android experience and starting from the very edges of Midgard, threateningly close to lower worlds with the N3 proved worthwhile. Without making much of a case for myself, here’s my verdict: Given the tweak-ability of the android platform and the price of the N3, I’d say it’s a darn good bargain (again, more later)! Within hours of procuring it I wasn’t missing the barren lands of the Symbian S60 with my Nokia N97 mini (ok, maybe I missed the carl zeiss camera). But before I proceed, is the Tecno N3 really a chinco phone? Yes it bears characteristics, considering the price range, and being manufactured by a traditional chinco phone maker. But wait, is it one really? What really is a chinco phone?

Shin Chong Ch’ing, I am a chinc! The Invasion of the china phone

I think it was about 6 years ago when I first saw one; it was still the age of the Laptop PC (at least here) with the idea of the smartphone as we now know it still in the not so distant future. Bright colorful touch screen with stylus pointer, implausibly loud and unfiltered speakers, it looked like the real deal…that was until we saw one drop, then another which was an imitation of one well-known brand or another. Within a short period these phones had become infamous and they earned the reputation which most of us still identify them by – unreliable and cheap.

So what were these china phones? They were generally devices that ran on the earliest MediaTek firmware. MediaTek Inc (MTK) is a big fabless semiconductor company from Taiwan (outsources fabrication, just design, R&D and sales). They supplied system software/firmware for their chipsets helping the Chinese phone manufacturers to cut cost. This was why all these phones looked the same from the inside (I mean software now), you could usually pick a knock-off and within 10 sec of probing, you’d know it was a china phone. Though the firmware was based on the same code, it was customizable. Unfortunately, since they ran on firmware, there was virtually nothing like installing apps or the likes. Later versions of MTK chipsets came with Java support compiled in their firmware, like a JVM that allowed installation of a number of java apps (like some Tecno phones). While the MTK platform wasn’t all that bad what we saw was from the Chinese phone makers were a bunch of phones with crappy hardware and lazy modifications of the MTK firmware.

These MTK chipsets had features not seen on their counterparts from other areas of the world; remember some of the earliest dual-SIM support, analog TV, even tri-SIM support.

Interestingly MediaTek has grown in leaps and bounds starting off in 1997 producing chips used in CD & DVD players to digital TV, GPS, digital home entertainment systems before venturing into the Mobile communications space in 2004. And now is a big gun in System on Chips (SoCs) for smartphones (now making dual-core and quad-core processors). In the future may pose a curious challenge to American semiconductor giant Qualcomm, who currently sit at the top.

System on Chips (SoCs) – In the case of cell phone is like a chipset containing modem for cellular communication, the application processor and the graphics processor all integrated. For example, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform with Scorpion/Krait processor, Adreno GPU, and modem all on-die. Others SoC makers are ST-Ericsson, Nvidia, Renesas Mobile, Texas Instruments etc. In some cases like Samsung, we can have the proprietary Exynos SoC (containing CPU & GPU) and a Qualcomm modem. Higher end Snapdragon chipsets have additional on-die Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth chips.

Needless to say, as we are witnessing, the face of the china phone is changing! Still in doubt? Check out this dossier of MediaTek SoCs from those on the earliest China phones to their latest products which I copied from Wikipedia.

MediaTek Smartphone application & modem processors / SoCs

• MT6235: ARM9 CPU at up to 208 MHz
• MT6516: ARM9 (ARMv5) CPU at 416 MHz / No GPU (very slow software rendering) / not 3G compatible
• MT6573: ARM11 (ARMv6) CPU at 650 MHz / GPU: PowerVR SGX 531 / 3G,HSPA compatible.
• MT6513: ARM11 (ARMv6) CPU at 650 MHz / No GPU (slow software rendering) / not 3G compatible
• MT6575: Cortex-A9 (ARMv7) CPU at 1.0 GHz / GPU: PowerVR SGX 531 / 3G,HSPA compatible.
• MT6515: Cortex-A9 (ARMv7) CPU at 1.0 GHz / GPU: PowerVR SGX 531 or Mali-300 / not 3G compatible
• MT6577: Cortex-A9 (ARMv7) CPU at 1.0 GHz dual-core / GPU: PowerVR SGX 531 / 3G,HSPA compatible
• MT6517: Cortex-A9 (ARMv7) CPU at 1.0 GHz dual-core / GPU: PowerVR SGX 531 / not 3G compatible
• MT6577T: Cortex-A9 (ARMv7) CPU at 1.2 GHz dual-core / GPU: PowerVR SGX 531 / 3G,HSPA compatible
• MT6517T: Cortex-A9 (ARMv7) CPU at 1.2 GHz dual-core / GPU: PowerVR SGX 531
• MT6589 (previously known as MTK6588): Cortex A7 (ARMv7) CPU at 1.2 GHz quad-core / GPU: PowerVR SGX 544 at 300 MHz / 3G, HSPA+, TD-SCDMA compatible

Now for just a quick moment checkout this short review on an Android phone with the MTK 6575 SoC. Also just for extra perspective, the Galaxy S4 Exynos 5 Octa 5410 chipset has the following specs: CPU – Quad-core 1.6 GHz Cortex-A15/quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 and GPU PowerVR SGX 544MP3. I’m not an expert but don’t think MTK is too far behind, though a little research did show that the MT6589 is not in the league of the truest high-end processors. Also there’s no LTE support yet.

Interestingly, the current MediaTek MTK6577 chips with Cortex-A9 architecture, dual-core with 40nm technology, are now the mainstream chip in many brands like Lenovo and Huawei. The waterproof Lenovo LePhone A660 phone running on the MTK 6577 with ICS in shown below and it goes for $199 on fastcardtech, not too sure if that includes shipping costs.

The Lenovo LePhone A660 waterproof Android Phone

My point is this – a shift in Midgard is definitely on the way, it’d be premature to say the grip of Nokia and the likes on the lower middle-range rung, particularly in Africa (with the Asha/S40 platform) is going to be shattered but the threat and possibility is definitely not non-existent. A N12500 Tecno N3 smokes a Nokia Asha in the same price range, also with a China phone with fairly decent hardware like that in the review, running a cool OS platform like the Android, I don’t think any Nokia (or even Samsung phone) in the same price range would stand a chance. The question still stands though; can you take that chink in the armor even though it translates to a superior smartphone experience, better than your current N-series phone or your qwerty Blahberry? You’d also agree that Lenovo or Huawei are less of chinks in your armor.

How about the global market? Telecoms expert Tomi Ahonen for this year predicts a stable and modest rise for the likes of Huawei (3^rd largest smartphone maker), ZTE (biggest of the remaining major Chinese smartphone makers), Coolpad (now in top 10, having displaced Motorola) and Lenovo (11^th). Read the entire story here.

Considering of the mid-range WP8? China no dey carry last, with Huawei’s 4Afrika initiative, we are set to see affordable Windows Phones with very decent specs. The Huawei 4Afrika WP8 sports a 4-inch display, a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 512mb RAM and 5MP camera for just about $150, how’d they pull it off? Never underestimate the Chinese though something might just give as it’s hardly ever too good to be true in the IT world.

Huawei 4Afrika

So is the Tecno N3 a chinco phone? I’d say an evolved one made by a phone manufacturer pushing hard to rebrand itself and penetrate emerging markets like Africa (which it is really succeeding at). They’ve also released the Tecno N7 which has a 5-inch screen, with a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 SoC running Android 4.0 ICS, a friend of mine picked his for N30000 and the price should drop expectedly.

A little more on my brief experience with the N3

The Tecno N3 was my first Android phone (yes, I’m a habitual late comer when it comes to tech gadgets), largely because my Nokia N97 mini croaked though it came back to life (Nokia phones resilience is no myth). But by then I was tired of the S60 5^th Ed. Platform. I had updated the Nokia maps, tried the newer look Evolve theme, even tried Xtron – an app than overlays your UI with a Windows phone style UI…same story, this was a dying dog, When it fell in the bathtub, the final straw had been laid.

With the Tecno N3, I missed the cool hardware and qwerty keyboard from my N97 mini but that was just the first few hours. Better browser, advanced UI, rich app store, customizability, PDANet for using phone as modem, Adobe reader problem from S60 phone non-existent, full access to social network apps – I didn’t have twitter on my S60 and that partly explains my lack of presence on the platform etc, I never looked back. But with a few days of use, its limitations became clearly apparent – Its internal memory (about 200mb if I remember well) and of course the RAM (160mb or so). While gingerbread ran seamlessly, it was clear there were limitations to the apps I could run on it…not a true joyride I’d say. I stuck with the low-end fun games like gyro, fruit ninja, ninjump, paper toss though cooler games like Jetpack Joyride and Pixel twist ran well (I later came across a list of HD games that it could support on Nairaland much to my surprise). While I couldn’t do anything about the RAM or the quality/weight of apps, I had to deal with the memory issue.

The commonly displayed Tecno N3 splash banner advert – currently on the Tecno homepage

I found a way to root the phone thanks to this guide by Bolorunduro Timothy on tecno android spot. Then I did a little research and found an app called Link2SD, which creates a symbolic link of your apps on the phone memory and moves it entirely (lib files, cache etc) to your SD card which you must have partitioned. That partition remains transparent to your phone; it’s like creating a shortcut and placing the tiny shortcut file in the phone memory while the entire app and all its files exist in a partition on the SD card which is hidden from your phone. Upside – lots of free space (almost equivalent to adding more internal memory, 1.6GB in my case) as partitioned from your SD card. Downside – you have to root (not a biggie really), and your phone startup time becomes a real issue as it has to load Superuser which in turns grants Link2SD root privileges to do its thing, I got to a point where I had tons of apps and had to wait for 5 min after rebooting before I could use my phone for anything meaningful.

While it was matched and was better than my S60 experience it limitations, my technolust and its chinco origins left me with much dissatisfaction. I needed to move on…still the N3 is a very decent phone for its price and once you can try the above mentioned procedures, believe me…it’s a giveaway!

A Sojourn to Jotunheim

Jotunheim from Norse folklore is the land of the giants still on middle earth. By my own attempt at facetious classification, Jotunheim is the land of the once upon a time flagship phone – the previous Galaxy S series (S3 is still Asgard quality to me), HTC sensation, desire HD. LG Optimus 3D, Motorola Droid, Sony Xperia Pro etc, basically pre-2012 phones that can still hold their own.

This was the next obviously accessible realm for me ( well, though I had found out about the Tecno N7, I wasn’t too sure about its memory details, you often find sites giving you wrong info on specs) and after a quick look out on OLX, I found a seller willing to trade a HTC desire HD which was shipped with Gingerbread for just under N30000, UK used of course. I jumped at the offer and procured the phone within 24 hours. It almost turned out to be a one-chance trip as desire HD (or Ace as it was codenamed during development) phones shipped with Gingerbread or having being updated OTA are virtually unrootable. The only option was to downgrade to Froyo before being able to root. The major tool which could help was the Advanced Ace Hacking Kit (AAHK) which I discovered had been retired just a week before I got the phone by the developer, who created had created it.

HTC Desire HD

After a few days on trying alternatives I resorted to downloading the hack kit and its components from alternative sources and after a few unsuccessful attempts at rooting it I took two days off to read and watch videos to understand what I was really trying to do. Long story short, it was downgraded and rooted on an Ubuntu live CD session, and with some internet guides and extra perspective from Ody’s tutorial, I downloaded two customized Jellybean ROMs for the phone and upgraded it. I’m currently running one (CynanogenMod 10.1) now without any issues.

So there you have it, from the Tecno N3 to the Desire HD running Android 4.2 Jellybean. More quality apps, more space, greater power…I’m moving ahead slowly eyeing Bifrost, the flaming rainbow bridge to Asgard and the android space has proven to be every bit worthwhile. Below are some of my very casual utilizations.

Real football…well almost

Anime tracks on PC radio internet radio app

The Data Gremlin

Usually I use 260mb 1-month data bundle offered by Etisalat at N1000 for a little under a month on my N97 mini. Just after my transition to the Tecno N3, it would last for barely a week. The android platform is that much data-intensive.

So what are the alternatives? Gaining popularity are the blackberry BIS packages with data caps useable on other platforms.

• The Airtel 1GB blackberry monthly offering for N1400 was the one I started with (BCM to 440)
• Glo monthly and weekly blackberry packages (Coweek and Comonth respectively to 777) at N400 for 700mb weekly and 1400 for 3GB monthly (with APN settings changes)
• MTN’s own offering I think requires some extra tweaking so I steered clear
• Nothing yet from Etisalat that I know of.

The Glo blackberry package with default setting – APN: blackberry.net, username and password fields blank, stopped working but for some strange reason after I tried the following settings – APN: glosecure, username and password: flat, it worked unlimitedly, with my 3GB intact but it always disconnected abruptly. Better than nothing especially when there’s apparently no cap.

No way you’re that smart!!!

Rounding off this write-up, I thought to mention a thing or two about the so-called Nokia Asha smartphones series as it stands as the direct competition to the Android China phones in the Midgard range. I think the smartphone tag is technically defective, while functionally it remains arguable, but even Nokia in its classification in its 2012 Q3 report lists the range as” feature phones and devices with more smartphone-like features such as full touch devices”. Definitely you must have seen posters or Lagos BRT bus banners advertising the phones as Asha Smartphones, so it has to be a marketing ploy. In its Q4 report though the Asha line was listed under along with the Symbian and Windows phone in the total smartphone shipments for that quarter, a ploy to boost sales image and keep the investors happy?

The Asha 311 and the 201 dual-SIM phone

The question is how to you determine what a smartphone is? Feature phones more commonly run on proprietary firmware, with third-party software support through platforms such as Java ME. The S40 is an embedded software platform and development is limited to Java software and web apps. A true smartphone should run a full blown operating system like the Android. With some Asha phones you do get full touch screens, numerous apps and services such as instant messaging, maps, web browsing, social networking, games, email etc., but that doesn’t change the underlying fact – it’s not a smartphone platform even if it shares similar functionalities as true smartphones.

We’ve seen the meteoric fall of Nokia from the top of the smartphone perch to the bottom rung. Want to know how bad it is? There’s no better place to look than Nokia doomsday’s analyst and industry expert Tomi Ahonen’s blog. Check out his just one of his posts – Tomi Ahonen on Nokia 2012 Q4 sales drop.

What do Ronaldhino and Nokia have in common? We’ve seen them both at their peaks and they were both a joy to watch but both experienced massive slumps and are now trying to make fruitless attempts at getting back in the big stage. After Microsoft’s bastardization of Nokia – two things are clear, Nokia’s slump sure did the Chinese phone’s manufacturers more good than harm and for Nokia, the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!

Thanks for the heads-up dinho…I think we can all see the obvious

Okay tech.geniuses that rounds-off this write-up. I hope it may as proven insightful even in the slightest. I’m not saying go buy a china phone. Decent phones with nice specs can be ordered at the sub-200 dollar range, we may see a push into the mid-range for the android china phones, Tecno has started it locally, Huawei and Lenovo should also help that cause as they are bigger brands, just don’t stick with the lesser platforms because Asgard appears to be beyond reach or justification at the moment. The Chinese are here and they are here to stay.

“Confidence is more often the result of Ignorance than actual Experience”

- Tim Caswell

Most time in our world of Tech, you meet people who exude a certain kind of confidence or as I would like to call it.. “Dark Aura”. These people know how to talk smart and they usually have this condescending tone when you ask an innocent question or when they are talking to you about some new technology or piece of software. Acting like they know it all. When I started, I was usually intimidated when I met people like this. As time went on, I realized that those guys, didn’t know much. But more importantly, I realized that those who actually knew their stuff are actually less offensive about it. When you hear people like Scott Gu,  John Resig, Rob Conery, Scott Hanselman,Paul Irish e.t.c speak, They never act like “I’m awesome kneel before me” whereas they are authorities and they KNOW what they are talking about. As a result, you want to learn more from them.

Awesome Coder

I’ve come to realize that in this world of tech, computer science, programming etc… when you know a little, you feel like you’ve almost seen all there is. That the world is flat and does not expand beyond your backyard. But the more you learn, the more you realize that there are actually other continents, other planets and galaxies out there that you know nothing about. That in itself is humbling.

I came across a guy at the office who developed an app using stored procedures and basic asp.net grids. When I asked him to explain his (lowsy) Db Schema, he scoffed at me… He’s no longer in the software development department (Thank God). But he developed this legacy application that me and other members of my team have to maintain.  After everything, he went on to rant during a meeting that I knew nothing about the application, insinuating that he’s more experienced in software architecture probably because I’m much younger than he is. Little does he know that he’s not a programmer. He’s just a Database Administrator (DBA). In fact, I know DBA’s who would have done a much better job. For example, no DBA in his right mind would intentionally add duplicate records to a Students table when a student is promoted and say “Its part of the process”. #facepalm

Douche-bag Programmer

We see these things often and truth be told, if you’ve been to a few of these Dev conferences, Hackathons e.t.c you will always find that one guy that feels like “I’m awesome, you can’t touch me”. That’s not not to say that anyone who is always talking about cool stuff belongs to this group. Because sometimes, people could be genuinely stoked or excited about something. But how you really know these guys is whether or not they are willing to even LISTEN, talk less of considering an opposing view. From my experience, you realize that at the end of the day, those guys usually don’t know much and as such are trying to over-compensate.

What’s a Custom ROM?

A ROM in the context of the Android Ecosystem refers to the Android Operating System (OS). It is usually located on a locked Read-Only (kinda) section of the phone so that Applications won’t accidentally alter its content thereby crashing the Device. ROMs that were created by the manufacturer of the device are called Official ROMs while those created by third party developers are called Custom ROMS

Why Install Custom ROMs?

There are two main reasons for installing a custom ROM:

1. Improved Features and Customization: Android is an open-source platform. This means that anyone can take its source code and do whatever they want with. This presents an opportunity where Developers can correct/improve whatever they see fit in the OS and this has led to huge innovations in the Android Ecosystem across the board. The Android Team looks at some of these custom ROMs and then implements the really good stuff back to the core Android framework. This is one of the reason’s Android is innovating like crazy whereas iOS is basically the same OS from 2007.
2. OS Updates: Android’s Open nature is a blessing in many ways but can also be a curse in some ways. Because Manufacturers also have the ability to tweak it as they see fit, They tend to write their own skins and applications to overshadow the core android experience which in many ways causes updates to come slowly (if at all). And even when they do come, their skins are usually just lousy compared to the pure Android Experience enjoyed by Nexus phones.
   Fortunately, the developer community has come in to save the day by porting the original Android source code to these devices and this makes non-nexus devices to not only enjoy the latest versions of Android but also receive timely updates

CAUTION: You should be very careful when rooting or flashing your phone. Make sure that the model numbers on the tutorials you watch or files that you download match the exact Model/Make of your phone. if in doubt, check the box of your phone or check under Settings -> About Phone. Secondly, Follow the instructions exactly Never assume anything. I would prefer you search for videos on how to perform the procedure online and follow it step by step. I damaged my first Android phone (the Galaxy S1) because I assumed that it was GT-19000 whereas it was actually GT-19003. I even ignored the warning not to tick a checkbox that said “Reformat Partition” because I assumed it would work anyway… “What were you THINKING?”… Yeah I know. So I owe it to you to warn you so that you don’t pay the same price. So just be careful. The chances of irreparable damage are low but still possible. That said, if you get it right (especially the rooting part) the rewards are huge.

Let’s Get Started

For the sake of this tutorial, I will use a brand new Galaxy S2 as the Android Device (I’ll be referring to it using its model number GT-I9100) and the Cyanogen Mod 10 (Android 4.1 Jelly Bean) as our custom ROM. The Samsung Galaxy S2 comes with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) out of the box. All the processes described below are slightly different from device to device but the core idea is the same.  Before we begin, I would like to explain what certain terminologies mean:

Download Mode: You can think of this as “Flashing Mode” where the device is ready to receive a new OS from a connected PC. Most phones use a button combination to get into this mode. It’s effective if the phone becomes unstable or reboots constantly. In the case of the GT-19100, the button combination is POWER + HOME + VOL DOWN. Hold the combination till the phone enters download mode. To leave download mode, just reboot the phone.

Clockwork Mod Recovery: This is a very powerful menu that gives you access to all kinds of phone diagnostic/power tools. It has a special function called Nandroid Backup that allows you to save the EXACT state of your phone (like Virtual Machine Snapshots) in case you really mess things up. We’ll discuss more on later in another post.
To enter this mode for the GT-I9100, You hold the following key combinations POWER + HOME + VOL UP

Firmware Download or Flashing Software: This is a PC application that allows us send a new Firmware/ROM to the device using USB. For it to work, the PC in question must have the USB driver for the device installed. In the case of the GT-19100, it’s an application called Odin.

The process of installing a custom ROM from scratch is divided into two parts

1. Rooting
2. ROM installation

Rooting

Rooting in simple terms is configuring the device so that Applications can have access to core Operating System files. These files are locked by default. There are many ways to root a device make sure you do proper research on your specific device for the method you prefer. Like I said there are lots of videos on this for each device so I suggest you watch some of them. but for our brand new GT19100, we have to first unlock the boot loader by flashing it with a custom rooted firmware. Rooting does three key things for us:

1. Allows Apps access to core OS files
2. Installs a security app called “Super User” to allow us manage access to those OS files.
3. Installs Clockwork Mod Recovery

First, we need to install the USB driver for our device. In this case, it comes with Samsung’s KIES software. It’s similar to iTunes and usually comes in the form of a Mini-CD along with the device. You can also download it from Samsung’s Website. This is to ensure that the phone’s USB drivers are installed otherwise we won’t be able to download the ROM to the phone via USB. Also for safety, remember to always put the phone in USB debug mode for this installation period. You can disable it when your’e done. It’s under Settings->Developer Options-> Enable USB debugging (may not be the same location depending on the version of Android).

Secondly, we download all the things we need here. Note that these are specifically for Samsung. Requirements for devices from other manufacturers may differ. After download, we have the following

1. Custom Rooted Firmware (CF-Root-SGS2_XX_XEO_LPQ-v5.3-CWM5.tar)
2. Odin (Odin.exe)
3. Rooting Application (S2Root.exe)

Step 1: Put the phone in download mode

Step 2: Run Odin on your PC and Connect your phone

Step 3: If Odin detects your phone, then proceed to the next step.

Step 4: Select PDA and browse to the Firmware file (i.e. the file named CF-Root….tar.gz). DO NOT TOUCH ANY OTHER SETTING

Step 5: Click the Start Button. The new firmware will be downloaded and the phone will reboot.

When it’s done, you’ll see a yellow exclamation mark when it’s booting. This means that you are running an altered firmware. After it has booted up, you will also notice a special App called “Super User”. Rooting is Complete!

ROM Installation

ROM installation is pretty much a breeze compared to rooting. Just take the following steps:

1. Get the latest nightly build of Jelly Bean for the phone (you can get Cyanogenmod 10 ROM at http://get.cm)
2. Get the latest version of Google Apps that corresponds to the Android version of the ROM we want to install i.e. JB (http://goo.im/gapps/gapps-jb-20121011-signed.zip)
3. Copy them to the “/Download” folder of the device
4. Reboot into Clockwork Recovery Menu
5. Use the Vol UP/Down Buttons to navigate to “wipe data/factory reset”. Then use the POWER button to select it.
6. Select “Wipe Cache Partition” then Select “yes, wipe cache partition”
7. Select “Advanced” then select “Wipe the Dalvik cache” and then “yes,wipe dalvik cache”
8. Select “Install zip from sdcard”
9. Select “Choose Zip from Internal sdcard” then select “Download/” folder
10. First Select and install the Cyanogen Mod 10 ROM zip file
11. Then install the Google Apps Zip file in the same manner
12. Select “Reboot System Now”

That’s it. You have successfully rooted your phone and Upgraded from Android 2.3 to Android 4.1.

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Running on a Samsung Galaxy S2

Please let me know if you have questions or observations so that I can use them to improve the article.

Thanks

The Apple Era

It’s clear that this is Apple’s time to shine. Their products are now market forces which makes people “need to have them”. I think this is due to the fact that Apple puts a lot of thought into their products and they design them to impress. Seeing Apple’s success, other companies no longer want to innovate. They just look at Apple products for ideas. Which is simply a shame! What they don’t realize is that..

Apple is not always right

Let’s take a few quick examples, shall we?

The 7-inch Tablets: Steve Jobs (who I can rightfully assume represented Apple’s corporate stance on design decisions) was very clear why 7-inch tablets would be “Dead on Arrival” (DOA). And he seemed right at first with the outright failure of the Galaxy Tabs. But then it wasn’t until the Kindle Fire (thanks to Jeff Bezos) that we started to realize that 7″ actually works in many use cases like reading books, gaming e.t.c It’s like the “Oh, this is a bit big” feeling when you held the iPad for the first time was trimmed off.

The Stylus: During the unveiling event of the iPhone, Steve Jobs said “Who want’s a stylus? yaack!“.. well I do! There’s a good reason we don’t just dip our fingers in ink. Bill Gates has been saying this for a while now. He has always been optimistic that in the future, handwriting will be an important form of computer input. And with the release of the Note 10.1, His words are starting to make more sense. In fairness to Steve (Bless his soul) Styli at the time were just terrible but the technology is constantly improving. Wanting to sometimes use a pen on a tablet is an intuitive, natural feeling and makes a lot of sense than typing on a virtual keyboard… “Search your feelings, you know this to be true”

3.5 inch Screen is Perfect: Well in fairness, this may not have been generated by Apple. But it sure was perpetrated by lots of iFans. When the first set of larger smartphones were released, iFans mocked them like the Evo 4G  or even the Galaxy S2 saying that 3.5 inch is the perfect form-factor and that’s why Apple has not changed it ever since. Well bad luck guys, Apple has realised that a 4 by 3 3.5 inch screen doesn’t make sense any more and will screw you over in “the new iPhone” (Not iPhone 5)

PC Market

The Apple plagiarism is a lot worse in the PC market. Everyone want’s to look like the Mac Book Pro or the Mac Book Air. I initially had a HP-G62 laptop. Although the laptop was nice, I started to notice a few weird things about the design before I realized a subtle hint at the older Mac Book Pro which wasn’t so bad. I later got a Dell XPS 15z, which is a very good laptop overall. The XPS line can be thought of as the offspring of the Alienware and the Inspirion line with Dell taking lots of good design and hardware cues from Alienware. Sweet specs, super-comfy keyboard, adequate internal ventilation, e.t.c  The laptop is a very good laptop, neat specs and all but its the outright copying of the Mac that sicken’s me. Using an all metal casing? Come On! This means that if a power outlet isn’t properly earthed, you’ll get a “shocky sensation” just like the Mac Book Pro or worse, outright electrocution. Don’t get me started with the over-heating (metal.. helloo) or the fact that I’d have to tear the laptop apart to change the battery or even the lousy decision to cramp all the USB ports on one side (Apple changed this in the Retina Mac Book Pro) and then there’s the arrow keys…*1 minute silence*

Anyway, There are also good things that they copied from Apple like the battery indicator which is pure genius or the backlit keyboard which Apple didn’t invent but really popularized. However, Alienware would never accept the XPS 15z as its baby because unlike the XPS 15 (L502X), It clearly looks like the Inspirion slept with the Mac Book Pro But its not just Dell, other laptops like HP’s envy 15 are a whole lot worse.

Spot the Difference.
Image courtesy of TheVerge

Mobile

Those of us who follow what’s going on in the Tech landscape are well aware of the current legal battle between Apple and Samsung. Considering that Steve Jobs did not mince words concerning his feelings towards the Android Ecosystem, one could assume that Apple is going for the kill. No licencing, just an outright ban will do. The judge had earlier asked Apple and Samsung’s CEOs to negotiate. However, that proved to be unsuccessful. Oh wait.. I think it may be  because Apple is asking for a licence and damages on all touch screen phones sold including Windows and Bada phones  like they freaking invented it! That is just diabolic. My God, Talk about sheer Greed! If Samsung’s CEO were a Nigerian, He’d reply “Your Father!” showing Apple’s legal team his left palm wide open. So its no surprise that both parties are slugging it out in the courtroom as we speak. Check out Apple vs Samsung: Billion dollar trial

Ok, let me drop all my previous prejudices and allegiances at door and come straight…

I am glad that Apple is suing Samsung.

Huh?!.. Wait, just hear me out. The truth is that Samsung can’t claim innocence. What tires me with the Galaxy Lines of phones especially the S1 was the fact that they just copied Apple unnecessarily. Which sucks! so I’m hoping that this trial will make Samsung really work hard and innovate solely on their own. Android in itself is quite different from iOS. Yeah there are few similarities here and there, But overall, you can’t completely mistake one for the other and knowing how to operate iOS doesn’t mean that you know how to operate an Android device. However, Samsung openly copies Apple. From icons, menus, effects.. to the music player, contacts app, home screen/drawer structure, S-Voice e.t.c Google even warned Samsung that its design was too close to Apple’s. The funny thing is.. Apple’s software design pattern (i.e using skeuomorphism) actually sucks! which is why Microsoft and Google have avoided it in Metro and Android. So in order to mimick Apple, Samsung had to throw away the spirit behind Android. And as a result, Touchwiz  is not as cohesive as iOS or stock Android. Just a design chaos.

What Samsung can’t see is that people buy their phones because they come with sweet specs at a very reasonable price. Not because of some Icons or Bouncy effects and certainly not because it looks like an iPhone. Heck, We’d be a lot happier if they just included apps for their hardware on stock Android period. Updates will roll out faster and there would be less confusion in the Eco-system. Fortunately, one of the beauties of the Android platform is that you don’t have to live with Touchwiz, You don’t have to wait endlessly for updates from Samsung. You can just flash it with CyanogenMod and problem solved. Which is what many users are doing judging from Cyanogen’s numbers.

Conclusion

So Dear Manufacturers, contrary to what it seems, you don’t need to design your products like iDevices to get users’ appeal. Apple has something similar to a cult following. In other words, people buy Apple products mainly because it is Apple.  This reputation has come from its unique style and design language that they have built over the years. So without the Apple logo, no amount of copying will help you, hence your current state of destruction at their hands. You have to innovate on your own and come up with better designed products that work. Devices like the Nokia Lumia 900, HTC One X or the Nexus 7 really drive this point home. When you hold them in your hand, their design speaks to you in a very unique and pleasant way. That in itself can make an open minded (as in.. non ecosystem locked down) iUser make the switch.

I used to work for a company called Dragnet Solutions. The company was involved in Computer Based Testing (CBT) where we organised CBTs for recruitments, scholarships, examinations e.t.c for some of the biggest names in the corporate Nigeria from Oil companies to Banks e.t.c.
A lot of things happened and I decided to leave. Many of the friends have been asking why I decided to resign from “a Good Job”. I was thinking of how to express my thoughts at once rather than answering individually when I remembered “Why I left…”. I am writing this because I believe that my experience might be of help to someone else.

The “Why I left …” letter has become something of an internet meme which started off with a letter by a former Goldman Sachs Executive which read “Why I left Goldman Sachs” and that resulted in an avalanche of letters like “Why I left Google” and It even spun some funny parodies including my favorite “Why I left the Empire” by Darth Vader. So I decided to add my own to heap.

Pre-Genesis

To fully understand why I left, I have to explain how and why I took the job in the first place. Before I worked at Dragnet, I was making plans to lunch my own startup when I was invited to Microsoft’s open door conference during which I had fun, answered questions, won gifts, talked with other techies.. Then I met a guy named Tag, who wanted me to come work for Dragnet. I was reluctant at first but he explained why I needed to work for a period of time and get experience. Not just technical experience but also corporate experience.

I was convinced, and I took the job for two main reasons:

1. To make an impact by developing great software that hundreds of thousands of people would use (Unless you are a nerd like me, you won’t quite understand the thrill)
2. To gain experience. i.e. to see how a company is run, what its like working with a team of like minded developers, planning projects e.t.c..

After that, he also asked if I knew any other good developer so I called my good friend Ifelere and in turn had to convince him to join us

Life at Dragnet

At Dragnet I and Ife met the other developer named Otee. So with the four of us; Myself, Ife, Otee, Tag, the Dragnet Development Department was born. Skills wise, we could do almost anything. We were all well versed in several programming languages, web design, database management, graphic design..
My unique strength to the team lay in the front-end. I was a bit better at UI design, then there’s Ife a.k.a The Mad Genius (I gave him this nickname because I felt that sometimes you needed a bit of insanity to follow his train of thoughts ), then there was Otee who is a Database Lord (This guy could anticipate the SQL Server Execution plan for every query he wrote i.e. he literally understood how Database engines worked internally) and Finally, our leader Tag who had all our skills put together.

Life was good and I started learning about planning, executing and managing projects as a Team. It was completely different from what I was expecting. I learnt so many things from the importance of source control, Importance of setting Timeframes, Separation of Concerns, Prototyping amongst other things. Looking back, I am really glad Tag talked me into taking the Job as I now realize that I was grossly naive back then about working with a team of programmers as I’ve always been a lone ranger, building everything myself.

Now that I think about it, You could think of us like the Penguins of Madagascar where I would be Private, Ife would be Kowalski, Otee would be Rico and Tag would be Skipper

The Penguins of Madagascar

I strongly doubt that any Nigerian Tech Company had a better team at double the amount we were actually paid.But Dragnet Blew it. Steve Ballmer is not known for too many quotes like Steve Jobs but he has one of my favorites: “Developers! Developers! Developers!“ Developers are the life blood of any software company. They are crucial to the success of any platform. As obvious as this is, Its sad that Dragnet did not understand this.

Tag and Otee’s Exit

When Tag was employed in Dragnet, Dragnet was at its infancy. Dragnet at the Time did not have its current Test Engine including its cloud infrastructure which is Face of Testing. Tag single-handedly built the entire platform from ground up which is just amazing considering that he was taking huge leaps on the then cutting edge technologies that were at their infancy at the time (like Silverlight). However, as is normal in Life, things got really sour between Tag and the Management of Dragnet. So one morning after my 4th Month, Tag called us together and told us he was leaving. Not too long after that, Otee followed suit leaving the bat to Ife and Myself

Climate Change

When Tag and Otee left, Things started to get really weird, we were shot with all kinds of projects some of which were not feasible and given all kinds of insane deadlines. Projects were rushed and even though each of us had to do in weeks what should naturally take months of proper development, we were still accused of not bringing value as they were not seeing immediate results on the projects that we were working on. We were yelled at, scolded,  and we were no longer developing (pun intended) rather we were literally over-labored.. still we pressed on hoping that things would get better with time.

The Agreement

In the midst of the storm, we were greeted with a surprise. A “Confidentiality” agreement that would essentially give them rights to ANYTHING we built while working for them. Here’s an example:

Employee shall assign, and hereafter does assign to Company all interest in all Confidential Information, whether copyrightable or patentable or not, made or conceived by Employee, solely or jointly for Company, whether or not the same were inventions for which no equipment, supplies, facility or Company Confidential Information was used and which was developed entirely on the Employee’s own time as long as Employee was under the paid employment of Company. All Confidential Information assigned herein is hereafter referred to as “Assigned Inventions.”

That was not all, It also stated so many absurd things that enforced me to report any Invention or Discovery I made while working for the company or that anything I build even after I have left the company using “skills I acquired” belonged to them. The last part was tricky and ambiguous because it meant that if I built anything that became successful in future and they could prove that Its similar to anything that had been (or was been) developed as at the time I was working with them, then it belong to them. They called it “Trade Secrets”.

I don’t need to be a lawyer to know how powerful patents and inventions are. If you have been following the way Apple and Microsoft are bullying the likes of Samsung,  HTC, Google.. You will see why as a software engineer, the “fear of patents is the beginning of wisdom”.

Then I thought to myself “Why this all of a sudden?” that’s when it hit me. This was one of reasons Tag and Otee left in the first place! They must of have wanted them to sign it (which I later confirmed). But there’s more. Why did this come up at all? What were they afraid of? Could it be the fear of an uprising? Were they expecting us to join forces and start our own company of which given what we already know could be disastrous to them? I don’t have the answers but here’s why I think they are wrong for thinking in that direction.

1. The sky is too wide for two birds to collide: Even though its a possibility that we may decide to create our own test engine, It is not something they should count on. As a developer, there are hundreds of similarly rewarding opportunities especially in Nigeria where IT is still at its infancy. So restricting our expertise or mind set to building a Test Engine is seriously myopic.
2. There are greater threats: Dragnet may be leading the Testing pack (thanks to Tag’s vision) but that does not stop any other developer from teaming up with their competitors/allies and pulling them down. As each day passes, more developers are coming of age and if they don’t improve their core expertise (testing platform). It won’t be long before something way better shows up on the market. So rather than fear their developers, they should have held them close

When I was given the document, I had a thorough re-think to make sure I was not over-reacting.
I thought about the things I sacrificed to work at Dragnet; Self Development, Hackatons, Dev Conferences, Dev camps, Research and more importantly starting my own company.
I thought about the “climate change” and the reason I took the job in the first place.
I thought about what I could be risking if I signed the document and stayed (also noting that it was not a guarantee that I could not be fired the next day).
I thought about how Tag and Otee were eventually treated after working for several years. There’s a saying from my place that goes:

When a slave witnesses where another slave’s body is being tossed into the bush, He knows he should not expect a proper burial

(sounds a bit dark I know, but it was too darn accurate) That’s when I made my decision. I told Ife that I was leaving and to my surprise, he was thinking the same thing too.

What’s Next?

Working for Dragnet has indeed been an experience. I barely had time for myself. Simple things like going to the bank became major events as there was hardly time. I could not focus on any other thing or project other than work. but now all that has changed. I am currently doing some research and working on a new exciting (and top secret) project. I miss the great friends I made at Dragnet, I miss the launch breaks and the office jokes. but that’s about it. I am pressing on to new heights and I’m glad I went through all that because I am far more prepared to launch my start-up than ever before.

As for Dragnet, I hope they find other developers who will fit into that environment and accept those terms. However, I doubt they will be to assemble another team that is as good. Good developers are an endangered species.

UPDATE: I realize that the tone of the post felt like it contained a tad bit of resentment but like I said earlier, I’m glad I worked there. I feel Dragnet was just doing what it thought was best for itself as a company nothing more. The goal of the post is not to antagonize Dragnet but to convey how I felt that propelled me to leave.

Hello everyone, this is my experience with Windows 8 – from a Naija guy’s position, well an average Naija guy. I’ll explain what I mean by this a little further down. So the next iteration of Microsoft’s flagship operating system is coming very soon with the Redmond outfit letting out the details in tidbits with announcements of changes, some leading to contestations as to whether it’s a move in the right direction (like the scrapping of the start button or the switch in logo – I’ll never forget the four blue screens of death joke…lmao) and also in massive globs with a number of pre-releases. This write-up is based on my experience with the Consumer Preview release which shouldn’t be too different from the more recent Windows 8 Release.

When I mean from a Naija guy’s position, I’ll actually be making a number of presumptions which I’ll explain below. They are based on my general perceptions as it relates to the relatively common environment and typical experiences we share here in Nigeria. I know there are exceptions and sometimes a huge variance in ‘levels’ but please just flow with me here.

The first assumption is that you’ll probably be installing your non-purchased copy of the final release of Windows 8 on a PC without touch support as I did in the case of the Consumer Preview release. As Windows 8 is going to be largely touch-centric you may ask what the point in doing that is. Well Microsoft know very well that about 1.6 billion people use the desktop version of their OS and they might as well want to keep doing that (how the hell are we supposed to play the next call of duty from a touch screen?). You might say the answer is to stick with previous versions of Windows but you know how some of us are.

Secondly and just as importantly, your PC may not have 24/7 connectivity to the internet so there will be times when you’ll be using Windows 8 offline. This might not sound as a big deal but at least you must have felt the current shift in trends, the need to be connected always and it’s interesting how Windows 8 was designed to match this need with the live tiles on Metro, the new media apps etc. I already know how different my phone feels without a data bundle on it and Windows 8 was obviously inspired by mobile devices.

With these two Naija-centered assumptions, I’ll delve into what my experience has been with this radical move by Microsoft to take on the Apples and Androids of this world.

INSTALLING AND SETTING UP

I won’t say much on this as I do not know how different installing the final release of Windows 8 will be from the pre-release version, but I’ll note that if you’ve installed Vista/Windows 7 a couple of times, Windows 8 should be a breeze. If you simply want to try out the pre-releases, I’ll strongly recommend using a virtual machine software suite; two very popular ones are VMware workstation and Oracle’s Virtualbox. That way you won’t get to muddle up your current installations and you get a full blown experience. Setting up is actually different as you can now sign in using an online Microsoft Account, along with some other settings which were not in previous versions.

NOW INTO THE OS

START

After successfully logging in, you are greeted by Metro, the new start menu and it’s totally unlike the start menu we are used to, maybe technically untrue as you are able to reach all your programs from here, computer, control panel, windows accessories etc., but not intuitively enough for me personally. I don’t know how it’ll be done on a touch device but on a PC you’ve got to right click on the metro surface and select ‘all apps’ to go to the Apps menu (mind you, there’s no drop down…it’s not a window now is it?). There you’ll get your full array of programs apps. Also you can rearrange and resize the tiles with the others rearranging themselves accordingly, you can unpin anyone (those you see are pinned by default), add new ones from the Apps menu. At first I was worried about omission of the search bar which was in the start menu from Vista/7, but I discovered that you simply start keying in your search query on the metro screen and it comes up though you can always search from a window in the desktop environment.

From my personal touch-less experience, Metro feels like a snag, it simply doesn’t feel natural with mouse clicks, drag and drops though it’s beautiful though I’m sure would be extremely cool on a tablet or touch pc. Maybe a little getting used will help but I usually can’t wait to hit the desktop tile, which if you think of it is actually being treated like just an app (did I hear you say ‘where’s the justice?!’).

DESKTOP

I remember the first few times I entered the desktop and noticed the start button was gone, I just stared blankly at the screen and wondered, ‘Uhhhhh, what now?’. It felt like an ignition key was missing and I wanted to get the engine started. Ok, there’s the explorer button on the taskbar, we are getting somewhere. Now I need to get to the control panel, control panel…control panel…control panel….arrrghhhh!!! I have to go back to metro! Oh Microsoft, why hath thou removeth thy trusted start orb??? Yeah yeah, we all have to be progressive don’t we?

I must confess the desktop looks beautiful. I don’t know if it’s the colours or the fact that that the clogs have been popped off the wheels of aero. Desktop windows now have solid look as against the glassy interface of aero. Thinking a little more on this, it would probably help improve battery life, a key factor when it comes to tablets.

A really exciting development for me is the introduction of MS Office-like ribbons to the windows, and the coolest part is the ribbons are context-based, so the options available to you will depend on which type of window you’ve opened. For example a normal explorer window will have your regular open and editing (copy, cut etc.) in the home tab, your music window will have tabs for share, play etc., and computer will have tabs with options for mapping a network drive, computer management and even control panel (so yeah, you don’t have to always go back to metro but I didn’t know that at the time). And yes, the File menu drops down just like in Office.

Also, good old desktop shortcuts still work, so you can still use Alt + Tab to switch between programs apps, Alt + F4 to kill apps and a lot more. Even Windows Key + D will bring you to the desktop from anywhere as long as it is open.

Still on the desktop, another beautiful revamping is the task manager. She’s absolutely gorgeous, trim and lovely. Simply put it’s been redesigned with programs (now apps) section showing the CPU, Network, Memory usage and Disk transfer per app and process instead of the more discrete presentation in the previous task manager. Of course you still have the performance monitor which looks more…modern I guess. There’s also a new tab called the App History tab which displays the history apps and of resources used by them. There’s more but I’ll leave it just right here.

Also the progress bar when copying or moving stuff has been redesigned, It now shows/charts a speed graph along with the progress and you can pause too. Pretty cool if you ask me.

A whole lot of the other stuff remained pretty much the same, or at least feels the same from the desktop environment. Control panel and all its options, Network and Sharing Center, the accessories, command prompt etc. Just before moving away from this section, there’s Internet explorer 10 but frankly I can’t write on it because I simply didn’t try it out. 9 crashes 9 times out of 10 every time I open it on my Windows 7 PC and I’m dead sure I won’t be using it if I ever switch permanently to Windows 8. Of note is the fact that you might have to be doubly vigilant as this culprit has a Metro counterpart with an extra attribute of touchiness.

MEDIA MANAGEMENT

If you no get decent internet connection, na for here e go PAIN pass! Yes, I mean every word of that. To make the most out of the media apps you have to sign in with a Microsoft account which you could have set up when installing the OS or from PC Settings. I guess Windows 8 it meant to be kept alive with internet traffic flowing through its veins. So you can imagine how limited my experience and invariably, the content of this write-up is. Take for instance the Photo apps on metro which still launches (annoyingly) from the desktop when you open pictures. It can connect your social networks like facebook and flickr and even SkyDrive to provide a seamless experience. But it feels annoying if you don’t have an internet connection or a touch input to slide through your pics.

Windows Store

The Windows Store app can be launched from Metro and it sports downloadable apps. It has a spotlight section like the music and video apps and then has categories like games, sports, books etc. Though it currently looks kind of threadbare, it should be expanded over time. Windows store also offers a decent amount of freely downloadable apps so I guess its usefulness will stretch beyond mere window shopping…lol.

Video and Music

Attempting to play a video from explorer will launch the video app. You can also launch it from the tile on Metro. Upon opening, it attempts to sign you in with your MS account. Now it’s a world of difference when you have your internet connection. The app has a spotlight section where it shows you a sort of catalogue of movies and TV shows, and it also shows you your private collection as well. Tap Click on any movie tile and it shows you the details and you can even watch a preview…sweet!

Of course you can always install your legacy video players like Media Player Classic or VLC Media player and keep watching your movies from your hard drive but won’t you be such a loser?!

The Music app looks like and works like the video app, displaying a music catalogue and your local collection. Thankfully Windows media player still comes preinstalled. For some reason, I couldn’t sign in with my MS account through any of the apps. I also learnt that WMP won’t come with DVD support (it’s all online now I guess), so VLC or some third party apps will still prove quite handy for those who still watch DVDs on their PCs.

Though I had to connect to the internet to checkout some extra features, I certainly wasn’t willing to let some living roof tiles and apps use up my precious kilobytes (yes, I said kilobytes as in 1024 bytes and no I’m not stingy, just conservative), so I never really gave Windows 8 a prolonged shot of jivey internet juice.

A LONG CONCLUSION

One of the reasons why previous attempts at having windows on touch devices flopped was because Windows wasn’t really touch optimized. It was obviously designed to work with a mouse and keyboard. Now Microsoft have redesigned the OS to handle touch input quite well…or that was the attempt right? But the desktop to me is still pretty much mousy and clicky while Metro is quite touchy (no pun intended) and it’s all one bundle. I really don’t know but it’s like having oil and milk in one mix. Maybe the tablet version experience with Windows RT will prove to be less of a desktop/windows experience, or at least the desktop/windows feel will become more touch centered, that’s where/how I feel Windows 8 will thrive in a market where the iPad holds sway with the Android tablets following behind.

In all, for we (perhaps I should speak for myself) touch-less dudes, it’s not that bad, beneath the surface sheets of wrappers, mats, tiles and numerous coatings of fingerprint smudges is a solid rock of a reliable Windows 7-like desktop operating system we can mostly rely on. If you never loved flying carpets, colorful boxes, mahjong or those sliding tile puzzles, you probably won’t like Metro on your PC, because it probably won’t prove to be any more useful. The more adventurous and open minded might appreciate it on their PCs but I’m sure even Microsoft never intended for that. For the less open minded dudes who will still give Windows 8 a shot, I believe the desktop experience can still be maximized by installing your legacy apps programs to handle your media files and other stuff.

That said, this little experience has also shown me a little of the immense potentials on the other side, so much so that I believe it won’t be a bad idea at all having a tablet alongside my PC. Tablets will offer a lighter, more fluid and lively experience outside of what the rigid PCs have to offer. Sure it all converges towards easiness and entertainment as against work, that’s why I probably will never abandon my PC. But imagining the Windows 8 experience on a light touch device (particularly the media apps), I’d say it’ll be a swell way to go.

Yeah, I left out a lot of stuff in this write-up, so slot a pre-release installer disc into your drive and give it a test drive, you’ll find it interesting. All in all, I still think Windows 8 will be great on a touch device and manageable on a PC, but let’s all see how it’ll all turn out. I’m sure some months from now you’d refer back to this write-up (if you ever remember reading it) and say, “Yeah, thought so, what did he know anyway?

As a result, I’ve decided to lay down a post ’bout an issue predominant in my life currently: Life after school for a budding IT grad.

I know most of us didn’t have it easy, freelancing OR jobhunting, but I figure, for the most part, you’ll all have profound experiences to share…so why not shoot ‘em in this direction? I imagine it’ll be quite the eye opener for those(like moi) whom are kiiinda jus’ coming into the scene, in a sense of speaking.

I’ve gotta go push up now(gotta give the lasses some eye candy, I guess)

Till the first reply, I remain ME.

I know you must be thinking, Online Classroom? What’s that? Well its something I’ve had on my mind for a while now. Let me take sometime to explain what led to it. When I started learning about computers several years ago, I would scour the internet for tutorials and materials for the technology that I wanted to learn. This yielded tremendous results as almost 90% of what I know is based on self education and web searching.

However, It can be frustrating for me and new comers alike to find an article or material that matches my level of knowledge. This was mainly because the same internet that houses BSc caliber material, also houses MSc and Phd. And many times, there is no distinction. It wasn’t completely a bad thing as in some cases I would be forced to upgrade my knowledge. But then, not every one has the time or patience.

Another problem with learning in this fashion is that you will not have a structured learning experience and you would only know the things you stumbled upon and not the entirety of the subject matter

The Basic Idea

The idea behind this application is to create an open public virtual school that would consist of virtual courses. These courses would have short materials similar to a single class in the real world. And then these materials would be organised in a hierarchically to form a lecture’s curriculum. That way, there is some form of learning progression. Materials could be of any form i.e. short clips, Wikipedia links, PDFs.. whatever

Also a mock assessment can be created to help the student to perform self assessment. It will be a multiple choice test of ten questions. this way a student can determine whether to go through the material again or move on to the next course

Development

Right now, I have coded about 20-30% of the application which is enough to get it off the ground. As time goes on, I will push updates to the repository and I encourage you to contribute your thoughts, ideas, codes towards it. We are all busy people but I believe everyone’s little contribution will go along way. Here are some screenshots of the application. I repeat this is a VERY rough sketch of the application and is in no way the final application (not even alpha).

Project Architecture and Hosting

This project was written in PHP 5 using MySQL as its Database, I also used web standards like HTML5, CSS3 and JQuery. In time I intend to change the architecture to the MVC pattern using the CodeIgniter Framework which will allow for easy synchronization of collaborative code. The SQL Dump of the Database is also in the repository
The project is located on Github (https://github.com/odytrice/Online-Classroom). Feel free to download the source code and test it out for yourself.

If you make any modifications or improvements please remember to push those changes to the “Dev” branch. Your feedback is crucial. When we have code stable enough to make it alpha, I’ll then commit those changes to the master branch

If the above paragraph did not make any sense to you, don’t worry just give me your feedback by mailing me odytrice@gmail.com 

Update: I have decided to shutdown the project as I will not be able to maintain it. Plus there are other good open projects that are simply better.

What is Source Control? Do I need it?

At first when I started learning about it, the tools (SourceSafe to be precise) were not so good and I wasn’t really impressed. It looked more like a hassle at the time. But the tools available now are so much better.

To properly answer the Question, I will first pose another question (Nigerian Style *Laughing*)

“How do I create backups while coding, In case something bad happens?”

This is a question that many of us have asked our selves and we answer them in different ways. Some of us create a duplicate of our project and then update that duplicate when we are okay with the code we have, I personally created Zip files of my code to show several stages of development. I even met people who wrote scripts to create a new numbered folder (e.g. Project_12) and copy their entire project into it. Crazy Huh? The idea of course was that if something went wrong, we would copy our last backup and continue from there. This process was chaotic and inefficient at best

Source Control was invented to fix this. You can think of it like “Shadow Copies” of your project. In other words if you overwrite important data by saving on top of previous data, you can recover the previous data. Kinda like a “System Restore”.

But that’s just scratching the surface. There’s a whole lot more to source control but I think this is the most important feature to many “lone rangers”.

When you have saved changes to a project, you can “commit” the changes to your repository. Something similar to creating a “Checkpoint” in gaming. These changes as saved as blobs and you can exchange and merge blobs with others.

Another nice feature of source control is branching. In my experience, I have come across many situations where I have developed up to a point where everything is working but would like to make some deep changes that may break my code. In such cases, I always created a separate project and make my changes there. If it works, then I’ll adopt it if not, I discard it. The caveat was that if I made changes to the original, then there would be a problem consolidating those changes. However, with source control I could create what is called a “branch” and then goof off in any way I please (Add, Edit or even Delete files). If all goes well, I can easily merge those changes. If not, I can “Restore” my entire project back to mint condition. This makes risk taking possible

Hmm, Interesting. But How do I begin?

There are numerous kinds of Source Control Systems and Architectures. The typical ones like SVN mean that all code will be stored away on servers and you must be connected to access the source code. However, Distributed source system are the rave now and for good reason. They are fast and don’t require any form of connection. You can completely work in isolation (lone ranger style) or in a team.

There are two major Distributed Source Control Systems. They are:

• Git
• Mercurial

The difference between Git and Mercurial is the same difference between the Linux and Windows, Android and iOS… and the list goes on.

Git – Is like a car with manual transmission, lots of settings and customization. Fully featured but has a steeper learning Curve. In many cases, you will need to use a Command Line Interface

Mercurial – On the other hand is like a car with automatic transmission, Its user friendly, relatively easy to use  but a good amount of functionality is kept out of your reach to simplify things.

Picking one is a matter of choice. Git is more popular and has wider support. In fact, Git is the only supported source system for the popular Github. Mercurial on the other hand is easy to use and has good GUI support for Windows. Mercurial users can use Bitbucket for online collaboration but its not as popular or feature packed as Github.

Another thing worth noting is that with Github, Only open source projects are free so you will need to pay a rental fee to create private repositories that only you or people you invite can view. Bitbucket on the other hand allows you to create both closed and open source projects for free.

Personally, I use both but tend to lean towards Mercurial because of its better GUI tools and Better Integration with Visual Studio. Below are the tools you will need for the different source systems.

Mercurial

• TortoiseHg - GUI Tool for Mercurial
• VisualHg - Visual Studio Plugin (optional)
• P4Merge – Document Merging Tool (optional)

Git

• Tortoise Git or Smart Git
• Git for Windows (Standalone Git CLI and GUI)

On a final note, If you are new to all this, I suggest that you take time and research them. Learning Mercurial with Tortoise Hg is a very good place to start. It may seem like a hassle but this will certainly revolutionalize the way you write code and will pay off big time on the long run.

The oppositions seem to be winning on these new tech frontiers namely Mobile, Internet, Browsers, e.t.c.. This is because even though they were the first to get on board these platforms, Microsoft as a company did not adapt quickly enough to the changes in the Landscape. It is often said that tech years are similar to dog years. This means that four years in the real world feels like ten years in the Tech World. That’s because things move at a very fast pace. Eric Schmidt once said

“The lesson to be learned over and over again in tech is that It moves and if you don’t move to it very quickly, Its very hard to get back in the race”

Eric Schmidt

However, the truth is that Microsoft as a company is changing dramatically. There is a new mentality in Microsoft and you have to be a keen observer to notice it.

This mentality shift is more apparent in some of the new Microsoft’s new technologies namely the Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. However, this mentality shift is present in almost all their technologies.

That aside, I want to talk about this mentality shift in terms of Web development namely ASP.NET.

When ASP.NET web forms was released, many of us (myself included) were excited about it because it gave us the same event driven application model that we used for desktop applications. But as time went on, it became apparent that this approach wasn’t the best way as it easily led to really complex code and had several issues (which I mention below) and so I had to move to PHP and eventually became a “Zend Master”

My problem with Microsoft is why it took them so long (roughly 7 years in real-time which would seen like 18 years in Tech) to come up with a better web-development ideology. In which time PHP has swept a good amount of Windows Programmers.

Problems with ASP.NET Web Forms

It was trying to Mimic Desktop Applications: The way a web application works and the way a desktop application works are very different. This is probably the major reason why web forms were problematic. The web is stateless and as such everything lives and dies with a single request. and to cushion that, Microsoft had to employ several strategies to maintain states e.g. placing a form to wrap the entire contents of a webpage, saving a chunk of data in a view state which made the pages and the traffic heavy, not to mention that it was unfriendly to search engines

It was trying to abstract the underlying technologies of the Web (HTML, CSS and Javascript): By using “Web Controls” that generated their own HTML, CSS and JavaScript, It seriously limited developers (like myself). The truth is they had the option to go the ASP way and script the entire website, but the platform (Visual Studio, .NET Framework) pushed you to use them. This made using you own styles or JavaScript for controls on you page to sometimes produce unexpected behavior

Page Life cycle and Tight Coupling: This is the clear consequence of Reason 1 above. Maintaining the state of an ASP.NET web application can be complex since its trying to be stateless hence the popular (Page.IsPostback) and as a result of the tight coupling, it was a bit tedious to decouple your code. Toss in Datagrid Pagination and Bindings and you have a really complicated code in minutes.

The Dawn of MVC

MVC which stands for Model-View-Controller, Is a design pattern that separates the layers of ANY application into three parts

1. The Controller – This Handles the input interface of the application. In a windows application, this would handle inputs like mouse click, keypress, e.t.c. But in a web application, this handle a URL request..

2. The Model – This handles the Data and Business logic of an application. In many web applications, we use our Database as our model and spec out our Business logic in the Database. Even though this has worked well for us, Its not an efficient approach especially when we need to make complex data manipulations.

3. The View – This handles the output of the application. In a web app. Everything that concerns the presentation of the application is done here. The CSS, Javascript, HTML e.t.c.

The MVC pattern is very important because it gives you the flexibility to swap layers and develop them independently without breaking your code.

Microsoft’s Come Back Kid: ASP.NET MVC3

Microsoft’s latest MVC framework (ASP.NET MVC3) surpasses anything I have used in the PHP world (CodeIgniter, CakePHP). C# being a strongly typed language is better for developing Business Logic than PHP. Toss in newer features of the .NET Framework like the lovely marriage between Entity Framework and LINQ (Language Integrated Query) which allows you to work with data from a database like you do with in-memory classes and objects. It goes beyond the ideas of active records found in the likes of Ruby and CodeIgniter. Another thing that is quite notable about the new Microsoft approach to Web-Application Development is the embrace of new open source technologies most notable of which is the popular JQuery. The Microsoft of 3-4 years ago would have released “MQuery” but instead they included support for JQuery and JQueryUI out of the box and even developed their own plugins for it (Jquery Tmpl and the Un-obtrusive ajax libraries).

 Home Coming

Normally I am hesitant to defend Microsoft but I think the time has come for web-developers who changed ships and some of us who shut our minds to Microsoft’s Technologies to consider a return because Microsoft has done it right this time.

To get started with ASP.NET MVC, Pluralsight has a good (and free) video tutorial series on this topic. Its worth checking out. Head over to http://asp.net/mvc for more information and tutorials