Windows 7, Tips n Tricks, Softwares, Tutorials, VJ Appz, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Tech articles & Much more.

In the recent times, one of the technology that has shown much promise to help people in India and worldwide around is one from Microsoft’s Kitchen. The motion sensing technology Kinect initially planned for bringing more excitement to a gamer’s life has now been extended, hacked and in sighted as the next big thing in the entertainment industry as well as in the technology sector.

Playing games on Kinect made me workout so much I was sweating after a few games. Kinect is a great way for people who spend their most of the time in front of computers, to keep in shape as it works in dual mode i.e. Stress buster + Health Care Taker. In fact, Microsoft is planning to launch aerobics games for Kinect which may definitely help people stay in shape without going to next door gym.

Kinect, may be advanced enough to read your lips or even hand gestures just like in the movie Minority Report. It may be able to read your emotional states, as well. This could give an opportunity to physically handicapped people like mute or deaf can use gestures to express their views which Kinect can decode and interpret in voice signals. This can also help people who are not much literate communicate or express themselves to those who do not understand their language. This may be particularly helpful for interpretation of regional language.

Kinecthesia, a project conceived by students at University of Pennsylvania features a Kinect that is wired to a set of motors, enabling the blind or visually impaired to navigate around a room (or even in an open space), using feedback via the motors in order to assess objects in their path. The user wears it like a belt, letting it sense objects in 3D space.

Researchers at the University of Missouri and TigerPlace, have found new ways to use Kinect to detect early signs of illness and risk of falling in seniors. They are using Kinect to monitor behavior and routine changes in patients. The changes they monitor can indicate increased risks for falls or early symptoms of illness. Also, they have developed a fall detection system using Doppler radar to recognize changes in walking, bending, and other body motions that may indicate onset risks of falls. Each body part creates a unique signature and the Doppler radar allows each body part to be recognized allowing for easier recognition of a fall.

Though each hack, modification is different in functionality, they serve the same premise: Helping people and making the world safer for older individuals, the one with less ability or one who are in rural areas. For the developing country like India, where rural population is in abundance, Kinect can be really an important technology that can help improve and shape people’s lives. The applications discussed above are just a preview of what we have got in just a single year of launch of Kinect the hardware which costs $150 and replaces $7000 in sensors, and within next few months we may see more innovative applications of this technology that can enrich lives of people not just in India but Worldwide.

Specifically if you are a new Java programmer or a new Java programmer on Windows 7, you will probably need to set up an environment first for Java.

Alternatively though you may need tools like Eclipse, but to go in hard code Geek way, here is what you need to do…

1. Right click Computer from the Start menu
2. Choose System Properties from the context menu
3. Click Advanced system settings > Advanced tab
4. Click on Environment Variables, under System Variables, find PATH, and click on it.
5. In the Edit windows, modify PATH by adding the location of the class to the value for PATH. If you do not have the item PATH, you may select to add a new variable and add PATH as the name and the location of the class as the value.

   

6. PATH probably will be C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0\bin\
7. Reopen Command prompt window, and run your java code.

Also To Compile & Execute code as always have these commands :

Compilation  javac ExampleProgram.java

Execution    java ExampleProgram

Sometimes in the initial startup you may face an Error or might have trouble compiling and running Java code. An error like "Error: Could not find or load main class <classname>” is quiet common.

To solve which You must ensure that you add the location of your .class file to your classpath. So, if its in the current folder then add . to your classpath.

Example : javac -classpath .; *.java

Just like last year, the year 2012 just started on a good note. I have been recognized and rewarded as Microsoft most Valuable Professional again. This time as well I have been awarded in Windows Expert – Consumer Category. This is the third consecutive time I have been awarded this award from Microsoft. This award is a recognition of contributions of a the awardee in Microsoft communities offline and/or online.

Here is the screenshot of the mail I got in my inbox @ 8:59 PM (IST) on 1st of January 2012.

Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Awardees, are exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who foster the free and objective exchange of knowledge by actively sharing their real world expertise with users and Microsoft. MVP expertise is expansive and impressive, covering more than 90 technologies that range from Windows and Silverlight to PowerPoint and Dynamics CRM.

Not everyday you got to see such mails. It’s a great moment for me. Would be updating the MVP Award Kit Unboxing Images Soon. Also I hope I can be awarded in different category next time.

About MVP Award Program

Benefits of a MVP Award Program : MVP Benefits

MVP SouthAsia Blog

Stay connected with MVP Award Program on Twitter, Facebook and join the conversation with #mvpbuzzin.

In 2011 I wrote 78 posts and added 0 pages to this blog, with 295 attachments in total.

TOP 10 commenters in 2011:

• Ram: 7 comments
• Grr: 5 comments
• ha14: 4 comments
• rohan: 3 comments
• Ankur: 3 comments
• Asriel Rusdyawan: 3 comments
• talat: 3 comments
• anant: 3 comments
• Pankaj: 2 comments
• Summary of 2010 @ WindowsVJ | WindowsVJ.com: 2 comments

TOP 10 most commented posts in 2011:

• Giveaway and Review: Techinline, Remote Assistance Software: 23 comments
• Enable Internet Sharing of USB Modem in Windows 7 [Tutorial]: 17 comments
• Giveaway and Review: Binverse, Usenet access Provider: 13 comments
• Deceitful practices by frauds offering Job letters from Indian IT companies: 5 comments
• Thanksgiving Giveaway : Microsoft Office 2010 Tips & Tricks: 5 comments
• [MVP] Congratulations 2011 Microsoft MVP!: 4 comments
• Free Microsoft Software, Resources for Students: 3 comments
• Lock rows or Columns in Excel: 2 comments
• Happy New year 2011 to WindowsVJ Readers: 2 comments
• Summary of 2010 @ WindowsVJ: 2 comments

• Vasu: 71 posts
• harsh: 7 posts

Though figures are not impressive as in 2010.. i hope to get them better soon.

Recently, when I checked out my home computer after several months I found it does not have Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) installed, The first thing I did was to install MSE and scan whole system. After the scan I kept getting a Trojan:DOS/Alureon.E threat in MSE Potential Threat details.  Even after clicking Clean to remove this, it encounterd an error all the time and puts the infection into quarantine.  The error code was 0×80501001. And even after several restarts and cleanup MSE was showing this virus.

Alureon is difficult to remove, is considered a rootkit (it may morph and change identity on your OS) and many IT professionals recommend a reinstall of the OS to ensure the rootkit is removed. DOS\Alureon.e enables its controller to learn your browsing habits, as well as extract other data from your computer system. In particular, any version of the infection  extracts from your PC  the following information:

• Websites visited lately
• Operating system technical details
• Most frequently used browser

Removal of DOS\Alureon.e is rated as rootkit extermination which implies the highest complexity many a times. I have seen several forums that help user by asking them to execute a tool on their computer and post the reports.

This virus generally corrupts the MBR. After the analysis of my disc management partitions I found a faked partition. The partition was 2MB size and was not created by me. To remove this rootkit all you have to do is delete any extra small partitions that live on your hard drive using windows disk management. Those are the virus. After the deletion of partition, you can use MSE to confirm removal of the virus.

A few infected Windows computers have been recovered by Anti-rootkit utility TDSSKiller utility as well. In case deletion of the partition does not work, this may be given a shot.

More Information about the Virus

Microsoft has released an advisory to help prevent infection on your computer:

• Enable a firewall on your computer.

• Get the latest computer updates for all your installed software.

• Use up-to-date antivirus software.

• Limit user privileges on the computer.

• Use caution when opening attachments and accepting file transfers.

• Use caution when clicking on links to webpages.

• Avoid downloading pirated software.

• Protect yourself against social engineering attacks.

• Use strong passwords.

These tips if followed can help make your Windows secure.

Facebook, your favorite social networking website, 9Gag, your favorite website for fun. What if you can use 9gag memes in your Facebook chat ?

Yeah its true. It all started when yahoo in early 2000’s introduced chat smileys. The smileys and those emoticons became a major symbol to represent one’s emotions in as few characters as possible. And now 9gag memes like forever alone, Me Gusta, Trollface can be sent to your Facebook friends via Facebook chat.

Internet Memes are sketches or pictures that reflect people and their behavior as sarcasm and are popular on not just 9gag but sites like 4chan and reddit as well. and 9gag. These memes are used to reflect people’s behavior or as an element of sarcasm. If you want to send memes to your friend on chat, Facebook lets you do that.

Here’s a list of some of the popular memes and the codes for sending them via chat.

[[171108522930776]] = Trollface
[[164413893600463]] = Me Gusta
[[218595638164996]] = Yao Ming
[[189637151067601]] = Lol
[[129627277060203]] = Poker Face
[[100002752520227]] = Okay
[[105387672833401]] = Fuck Yea
[[100002727365206]] = Challenge Accepted
[[143220739082110]] = Are You Fucking Kidding Me
[[168040846586189]] = Feel Like a Sir
[[169919399735055]] = NOT BAD
[[142670085793927]] = Mother Of God
[[170815706323196]] = Cereal Guy
[[167359756658519]] = NO
[[224812970902314]] = Fucken
[[192644604154319]] = Fuckencia
[[145768898802324]] = FUUUUUU.
[[FapFapFapFap.B]] = Fap Fap Fap Fap.
[[106043532814443]] = Y U NO.
[[214457085240151]] = Nothing to do here
[[220611681291318]] = Not Bad
[[227644903931785]] = Forever Alone
[[125038607580286]] = Forever Alone

Enjoy and express yourself more freely on chat now. Feel free to share your fav meme here…

For all those new Android developers out there, here is how you can set text and display it on your Android application’s front end.

TextView textViewObject = new TextView(this);

textViewObject.setText(“Hello, Android”);

setContentView( textViewObject);

The output on the screen would look like :

Here you create a TextView class’s object textViewObject with the class constructor, which accepts an Android Context instance as its parameter.

Next, you define the text content with setText().

Finally, you pass the TextView to setContentView() in order to display it as the content for the Activity UI.

Rectify java.net.SocketException: Permission denied (maybe missing INTERNET  permission) error

By default, permissions for accessing Internet by an Android file are off. If you wish to do the same you may need to add a simple line into the manifest file of your Project. The permission "android.permission.INTERNET" allows applications to open network sockets.

You may receive an error like :

WARN/System.err(): java.net.SocketException: Permission denied (maybe missing INTERNET permission)

This error probably comes up when you do not have Internet permissions set in your Android app. So if you do not have permissions set in your manifest file, add the following line in your AndroidMainfest.xml file that can then have access to the internet:

 <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"></uses-permission>

Your Android Manifest XML file may look like this once you have added the permission :

<manifest xlmns:android...> ... <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"></uses-permission></manifest>

Compile the project to get it working. 

ImageSource

Toast messages is a very popular way of raising a message within an android application to show user a warning, message or an alert.

The screenshot below shows an example toast notification from a Twitter application. It displays a Toast that article is posted to Twitter successfully.

To show a Toast message First, instantiate a Toast object with one of the makeText() methods having three parameters: the application Context, the text message, and the duration for the toast. This object can be displayed on the Android app screen using the toast notification with the method show(), as shown :

Toast toast = Toast.makeText(context, text, duration);

Toast toastObjectName = Toast.makeText(getBaseContext(), “Article Posted to Twtter successfully”, 5);toastObjectName .show();

This example demonstrates a Toast that can be posted from your app for 5 seconds duration, with the text as quoted above. Here we are using getBaseContext() to get the defalt context for the class. You can also chain your methods and avoid holding on to the Toast object, like this:

Toast.toast(context, text, duration).show();

Toast Duration have 2 default integers for duration
1) Toast.LENGTH_SHORT – Display the toast for short time to display small notification text.
2) Toast.LENGTH_LONG – Display the toast for long time to display big notification text.

A standard toast notification appears near the bottom of the screen, centered horizontally. If you wish to display Toast in some other position setGravity(int, int, int) method can provide this feature which accepts three parameters: a Gravity constant, an x-position offset, and a y-position offset.

For example, if you decide that the toast should appear in the top-left corner, you can set the gravity like this:

toast.setGravity(Gravity.TOP|Gravity.LEFT, 0, 0);

If you want to nudge the position to the right, increase the value of the second parameter. To nudge it down, increase the value of the last parameter.

Make sure you import the following library in your JAVA code to get the things started…

android.widget.Toast

Toast is a nice way to provide user alerts and notification. It can also be used by developers to keep a track of any errors to display some Toast in the exceptions.

So you want to develop for Android ? Huh… ? Android is a open source OS by Google (rather purchased by Google in 2005) which is used in Mobile phones as well as in tablets. Hardware manufacturers like Samsung, Amazon are using Android to power their devices.

You would ask why you would want to develop an application in Android. Reasons may be a boost to your career, one of the demanding needs in today’s scenario and yeah it is cool. (Though we found Windows Phone 7 cooler, which we would cover coming week)

So if you want to get started with development of Android, here is list of tools & components you would require:

1. Java

• Go to http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html 
• Select “Java Platform, Standard Edition”, by clicking on “Download JRE.”

• Select the Windows platform, click the checkbox of "Java SE Runtime Environment 6u24 with JavaFX License Agreement", and click "Continue".
• On the next page, download the JRE using the hyperlink.
• Install it once downloaded.

2. Eclipse (Galileo)

• Go to http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/release/galileo/r.
• Select the “Eclipse IDE for Java Developers” package.
• Download Windows 32 bit edition & extract the folder from the zip download to your desktop.

• Inside the folder, you may find eclipse.exe which is used to start eclipse IDE.
• When prompted on first startup, Leave the default workspace alone and select the checkbox titled “Use this as default and do not ask again”.

3. Android SDK

• Download Android SDK from http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html for eclipse.
• Select the Windows Package, android?sdk_r09-windows.zip and download it to your desktop.

• Extract it and execute SDK Setup.exe (or SDK Manager.exe).
• A window labeled “Choose Packages to Install” shall be skipped as of now.

4. Add ADT plugin

• Navigate to Help –> Install New Software and then click on Add in the Available Software dialog.

• In the Add Site dialog enter “ADT Plugin” in the Name field, and try any of these URL
• http://dl?ssl.google.com/android/eclipse
• http://dl?ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/site.html
• https://dl?ssl.google.com/android/eclipse
• Click on OK; Expand the tree named “Developer Tools”.
• Check ALL boxes that appear & finsih the installation.
• Select Yes for “Software Updates” dialog at installation end.
• Eclipse will restart.

5. Link ADT Plugin and Android SDK

• Start Eclipse. Navigate to Window –> Preferences.
• Click on Android.
• In the SDK location browse the path to the android-sdk-windows folder.

• Click on Apply & Click OK.

6. Add Platforms

• Start Eclipse & go to Window -> Android SDK and ADV Manager & Select “Available packages”.
• Assuming we are developing apps for Base SDK Android 2.2, Add SDK Platform Android 2.2 and all of the API 8 packages

• Click on the Accept All radio button for all packages and then click on Install to start.
• At the end of a successful installation “Restart ADB".

7. Add Android Virtual Devices (AVDs)

Create an AVD for the Google Nexus One smart phone with these steps:

1.) In Eclipse Go to Window -> Android SDK and AVD Manager

2.) Select “Virtual Devices”. Click New in the right panel.

3.) Type the name of the AVD, for example nexus_one_avd

4.) Set the Target as Android 2.2(The Base SDK for your application)

5.) Set the SD Card Size to 20MB.

6.) Set the Skin Resolution at 480 X 800.

7.) Set the Abstracted LCD Density to 240 & Click Create AVD.

8.) Exit the Android AVD Manager.

Though you may change these settings as per your need they are ideal one for beginner.

8. Hello World Tutorial

After this loads of work you may Create your first Hello World Android program, using the steps listed at the page: http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/hello-world.html

While running the application it will take some time for the Android emulator to load. Make sure you have enough patience to work with Android. To exit the app and go back to the Android UI, press the ESC key.

For any queries/Issue/Questions write us up in the Comment Section….

Android, Android Development, Development Kit for Android, Android for Beginners, Learn Android