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After the Bangalore Mirror, it is now Hindustan Times publishing a news about JiniBooks and Indian War Comics available on iPad.

We all are now aware about ‘Indian War Comics’ and ‘BraveHearts of Mumbai – 26/11′ are available on iPad via JiniBooks. Its an honest and sincere effort by TechJini to make the content available digitaly, via iPad. Soon the other comics released by Indian War Comics will be available on iPad and other tablets as well. We are glad this effort is paying off and different media is also taking a note of our effort.

Congrats again to all the team!

Today Bangalore mirror published a small write up about TechJini’s efforts to salute the war heroes of Indian army.

Congrats to all TechJini team and especially Amit and Shyamal.

About ‘Bravehearts of Mumbai’

26/11/2008 is a sad day in Indian history, when the terrorists attacked the city of Mumbai. It was by brave effort of various Indian security forces like NSG, Mumbai Police the terror was brought to an end. Now Indian War Comics has immortalized story of one such hero, Maj Sandeep Unnikrishnan AC by launching their 3rd comic ‘Braveheart of Mumbai – 26/11’. The comic details Maj Sandeep Unnikrishnan’s valour while he was fighting Ajmal Kasab’s associates in Taj Hotel, during 60 hour Mumbai terror attacks in Nov 2008.

Indian War Comics has also partnered with TechJini Solutions, a Bangalore based IT company, to publish the stories on Smartphones and tablets using JiniBooks, an interactive content publishing platform. JiniBooks, enables small to medium size publishers and authors to reach bigger audience via digital medium. Authors can not only have static content but also build interactive magazines. Jinibooks is currently available only as an iPad application and soon it will be available for Android based tablets like Samsung tab etc.

HTML 5

HTML is always considered as one of the important aspects of web development. Here, we are discussing about HTML5.

HTML5 which is currently under development is the next major revision of the HTML standard. Like its immediate Predecessors HTML4.01 and XHTML 1.1 , HTML5 is a standard for structuring and presenting content on world wide web.

This new standard incorporates features like video playback , drag and drop , geolocation, data storage , visiting websites offline , forms and many more.

Here is a brief history of HTML5.

HTML5 which is currently under development is the next major revision of the HTML standard.

There was never any such thing as HTML 1

The first official specification was HTML 2.0, published by the IETF, the Internet Engineering Task Force.

Later on the role of the IETF was superceded by the W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, where subsequent iterations of the HTML standard have been published.

In the latter half of nineties HTML 4.01 was published.

After HTML 4.01, the next revision to the language was called XHTML 1.0

The content of the XHTML 1.0 specification was identical to that of HTML 4.01. No new elements or attributes were added.

The only difference was in the syntax of the language.

Valid XHTML 1.0 document requires all tags and attributes to be in lowercase. All attributes must be quoted.All elements must have a closing tag.

These rules were similar to that of XML.So they were moving towards XML more.

Then the W3C published XHTML 1.1.

It seemed as if the W3C were losing touch with the day-to-day reality of publishing on the web as they were moving towards XML.

They began working on XHTML 2

XHTML 2 wasn’t going to be backwards compatible with existing web content or even previous versions of HTML

Representatives from Opera, Apple and Mozilla were unhappy with this direction.

They formed their own group: the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group, or WHATWG

They started working on HTML Standard and came out with new revision HTML5

The W3C uses a consensus-based approach: issues are raised, discussed, and voted on.

At the WHATWG, issues are also raised and discussed, but the final decision on what
goes into a specification rests with the editor. The editor is Ian Hickson.

While HTML5 was being developed at the WHATWG, the W3C continued working on XHTML 2

Later on W3C admitted that the attempt to move the web from HTML to XML just wasn’t working.

Rather than start from scratch, they wisely decided that the work of the WHATWG should be used as the basis for any future version of HTML.

Later on W3C announced that they will stop working on XHTML 2 and they will support WHATWG.

There are two groups working on HTML5. The WHATWG is creating an HTML5 specification using its process of “commit then review.” The W3C HTML Working Group is taking that specification and putting it through its process of “review then
commit.”

TechJini Solutions
TechJini Solutions is Bangalore, India based company working in the areas of software product engineering services and creating next generation software products that bring real business value. We take pride in our philosophy of taking on challenging problems and providing innovative and outstanding solutions. We are proud to develop applications on different mobile/tablet platforms including iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Android.

Next time, we will look at Forms in HTML 5. Feel free to email me for more details – avidnyat@techjini.com

The android developers tutorial guides to create an app that shows a map the user can use to zoom and add overlay items that mark points of interest. Suppose the user wants to display the location of the overlay items that were added,as a callout bubble, a customized layout has to be created and added as a subview of the mapView.

Creating a layout:
Create a new xml file in Layout folder,say popOver.xml.

<FrameLayout xmlns:android=”http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android”

android:id=”@+id/mapBubbleWrap”

android:layout_width=”wrap_content”

android:layout_height=”wrap_content” >

<LinearLayout android:orientation=”horizontal” android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:id=”@+id/bubble_container”>

<FrameLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content”>

<ImageView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content”

android:id=”@+id/dialogimage” android:src=”@drawable/popup_leftpointer”/>

<ImageView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:paddingLeft=”10dip” android:paddingTop=”7dip”

android:id=”@+id/dialogimage1″/>

</FrameLayout>

<FrameLayout android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:background=”@drawable/popup_middlebg”>

<TextView android:id=”@+id/mapBubble”

android:layout_width=”wrap_content”

android:layout_height=”wrap_content”

android:gravity=”center” android:paddingTop=”7dip”/>

</FrameLayout>

<ImageView android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:id=”@+id/dialogimage2″

android:src=”@drawable/popup_right” />

</LinearLayout>

</FrameLayout>

The above xml code just contains the image of the popover that is to be displayed onTap of the overlay item. I have 3 images joined together to form a single popover image. One can use a single image and add a text displaying the location inside it. However, 2 images and a text is being displayed in popover so 3 images are being used.

Figure(A)

Figure(B)

Figure(C)

I have used the figure(B) to display the text(location), the left pointer points the top of the item marker.

Figure(D)

Figure(D) shows how the popover will look once we add the above view in the mapview.

Adding the customized view in the MapView

Then,in the MapOverLay class that extends ItemizedOverlay,in the overridden OnTap method, inflate the popOver.xml layout.i.e. protected boolean onTap(int index)

First, we have to get the location of the overlay item. This is done by the getProjection method of the MapView class.

Point point = map.getProjection().toPixels(item.getPoint(), null);

- getProjection() gets a projection for converting between screen-pixel coordinates and latitude/longitude coordinates.

- item is the overlay item (Overlay item = (Overlay) getItem(index);)

Now,we know where we have to place the customized view on the screen. But the point we have got will place the popover on the marker. We need to place it on top of the marker. To get the marker image’s height and width ,use getIntrinsicHeight and getIntrincsicWidth.
height=marker.getIntrinsicHeight();
width=marker.getIntrinsicWidth();

The customized view now has to be moved a few pixels above that corresponds to the marker height and displaced a few pixels in the x-direction that is half the marker’s width.

Set the LayoutParams of the layout that is being inflated.

LayoutParams params = new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT,
LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT, point.x – width/2, point.y
- height, 0);
layout.setLayoutParams(params);

Now,add the view to the mapView.

mapView.addView(layout);

The x and y parameters being set in the LayoutParams depends on the kind of image being used as the popover. The image that I have used has a pointer that has to be displayed in the middle of the marker and it won’t be set in the middle of the marker if I use the above logic of setting the x and y parameters of the LayoutParams to half the width of the marker and the full height of the marker. If I do so,the left corner of the image will be displayed on the marker as shown. So use it according to the image being used.

iPad has emerged as one of the major inventions in the modern world. Though, it is still new and lots of applications with it are still in primary stage, it has surely captured the eye of the world. The business executives are hoping to use iPad applications in the best possible way they can. Different industries are looking at this invention in different ways, hoping to replace the laptops and make life of their executives easy and smart. That is really a magic this gadget has created. A recent study has revealed that iPad tablet sales may reach 7 million units worldwide in 2010 and 15 million next year and a high of around 20 million in 2012.

This simply means the number of iPad users will keep increasing year on year. In other words, there is a huge demand for different applications based on this platform. Today, iPad applications are in great demand and with this kind of increase in sale of this gadget will demand more such applications.

Many industries are looking for different applications to be customized the way they want creating a need for lot of smart phone application developers worldwide. One such industry is education. Here, I’m talking mainly about the universities and colleges. They always create a huge buzz attracting lots of students from all over the world. These days these educational institutes use different types of systems for different purposes such as student management, admissions, examinations or even library. With the invention of iPad in particular, these universities will be looking to use the gadget at the best.

Let us look at some possible scenarios:

1. There is a possibility of a virtual classroom, which can be accessed by both the students and tutors. This simply means, both the students and/or tutors can access the classroom sitting at any corner of the world.

2. A student can access his examination or even assignments via his iPad, or even submit them with the gadget. Same way, tutor can upload the examinations and/or assignments.

3. A student can take his notes in the class, email them instantly and can access the classwork at any time.

4. Institute (College/University) can easily keep track of his students, tutors, guest lecturers and other staff easily and can publish related information online, which can easily be accessed by the concerned people.

5. Students/tutors can easily access the library online with their iPad.

6. Marketing department of a university can use these applications to showcase more information about the university, especially when it comes to inviting foreign students.

There could be many more such possible scenarios when we consider different activities in an educational setup. The most important thing with all these applications is that one can use these applications even when he is on the go or traveling. He doesn’t need to be in front of computer/laptop accessing the applications. Life will surely be very much convenient, still easy and simple.
KISS…Keep It Simple, Stupid, as they say it.

How important is it for the universities to create applications for iPad?

The sale of iPad is increasing day by day and the numbers says it all time and again. Soon, you will find students carrying their iPad to the classrooms and taking notes on it. There will be a great demand for iPad amongst the students, especially students doing their doctorate and engineering or technology students who always keep themselves well verged with the latest technology available and gadgets in the market.

Today, iPad is a device mostly used by the executives and business class, but it will not take much time for the student community to adopt the best features of this device and make the best use of the same. It will then become mandatory for the educational institutes to create the applications that are easily available and supported on iPad.

Educational institutes can use iPad applications for different departments including administration, admission, laboratories, examination, library, student management, student councils and alumni and many more, also for different set of personnel including the university staff, tutors, students and top university officials as well. iPad applications can be a great help specially for people in marketing department of a university or higher authorities looking to create establishments or tie up with foreign delegates, foreign entities and organizations. In all, lot of university departments and personnel can make use of iPad applications in a different ways to the best of their use.

Mac is already playing a large role in education sector in the US market. The use of Mac Books is increasing day by day, and with universities, tutors and students adopting different technologies, I don’t see a reason why iPAd will not get its share in this particular industry. iPad is here to stay and to grow – not just in numbers but also with its usage and applications that comes with iPad.

The world is changing and surely everyone’s life. The technology has already taken over various industries and education is no different. It’s a boom time of iPads and universities, colleges; educational institutes need to change their strategies, plans to adopt this new device.

TechJini Advantage

TechJini Solutions is Bangalore, India based company working in the areas of software product engineering services and creating next generation software products that bring real business value. We take pride in our philosophy of taking on challenging problems and providing innovative and outstanding solutions. We are proud to develop applications on different mobile/tablet platforms including iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Android.

Recently, we have worked with one of the major universities and set up innovation labs for them. This application was developed for iPad as well as iPhone users. There are different departments in this educational institute that takes the advantage of different applications we developed for them.

Why TechJini?

• Global consulting company
• Innovation in every aspect of Application Development Life Cycle
• More than 25 iPhone Apps in the Apple App Store
• Focused and Personalized approach towards each client
• Experience in working with Mobile OEM’s and Fortune 500 companies
• Quality process at zero defect delivery
• Extensive experience of working with education industry
• Flexible engagement model
• 100% delighted customers
• More than 60% of revenue from repeated business
• More than 100% growth YOY

Feel free to email me for more details – kaustubh@techjini.com

It was time for another team outing and this time we headed to Seagot Banasura Resort located in Wayanad district, Kerala. As it is 290 kms away from Bangalore we first planned to leave at 6.30 but Amit suggested we should leave by 6 and guess what happened the next morning….as everyone started gathering in front of the office around 6 on a Saturday morning, Amit and few others who were supposed to be picked up on the way by him came only at 7!!! Grr……By then the bus guy (who did not know the way to reach J.P. Nagar from Banashankari) also arrived along with 3-4  helpers and later we discovered that the driver and his ‘3′ helpers were not of any help as they did not know the way to reach Mysore Road and needed help to reach Mysore and all the way to Banasura. Thanks to his driving skills, we took 2.5 hours to reach Mandya where we stopped for breakfast. Once we stuffed ourselves with Idlis, Dosas and Vadas, we had gathered energy to make some noise in the bus. We first introduced the guests (which included family members and future family members ) and then played Dumb charades. We took the by pass as we reached Mysore thinking it would be shorter than going through the city but it turned out to be a longer route . Few of us dozed off while Santosh Prakash was trying to play Kannada, Hindi, Telgu songs and movies on the Tv. Finally he played the movie Golmaal and the audio quality was so bad that it just sounded like noise. We crossed Gundalpet and entered the narrow roads of Bandipur/Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary.

The weather seemed to have turned so cool and pleasant with trees on both sides of the road. All the sleepy eyes opened up and we shut off the Tv and opened the windows wide to enjoy the cool breeze and to try spotting animals. We saw plenty of monkeys and were able to spot a herd of young elephants which were grazing among the tall bushes just a little away form the road. We stopped for a good 5 minutes to capture the best shots on our cameras. We drove a few kms ahead to stop at the check post to pay the road tax as we entered the God’s own country – Kerala. We strolled on the road while munching on some tapioca chips and took few group snaps till the driver came back. The scenery from Gundalpet is lovely and once we enter Kerala it is spectacular. We passed through the never ending green fields and then through lovely mansions set amidst the pepper, tea, and cardamom plantations. Greenery and water was in abundance everywhere we looked. We had planned to lunch at the Greengates Hotel in Kalapetta around 1pm but our dear driver took us at 3 when the kitchen was closed   .We were supposed to meet our guide from the Seagot resort at the Greengates and then follow him to the resort…..he had not reached the hotel yet and so there we were walking up and down the road hungry and waiting. There was no food going to be served at the resort either as we had not informed them earlier Thanks to Sumanth (one of our guests who turned out to be the host ) for coming up with the idea of buying 20 packets of Maggie from Kalpetta town and planned to ask the resort guys to cook that for us. By the time we finished shopping for our solid and liquid items n the town the resort guide had arrived and we followed his car. We drove up and down the roads with beautiful view and stopped at the bottom of a hill on top of which was ‘Seagot Banasura Resort’.
The road is not motor-able and has twists and turns and ups and downs which our huge bus couldn’t climb.The resort guys had sent jeeps and cars to transfer us from the bottom of the hill to the resort but a bunch of us planned to walk up. The excitement had killed the hunger pangs and instead charged up some of us to walk up the hill all the way.
It was 5pm when we reached the resort. The view is splendid and a real treat to the eyes. One can see water on all four sides and small islands which are naturally formed. There are range of hills and mountains surrounding the resort and is beside Banasura Sagar- India’s largest & Asia’s second largest earth Dam. It was quiet and peaceful up there with only the sound of breeze buzzing around our ears.
We settled down to enjoy the view till the Maggie was cooked. Once we ate the hot maggie which tasted better than ever as we were hungry we went to check out our accommodation which were clean and spacious tents. We gathered together around 6.30pm to have tea, pakodas and decided to play games. We played The Cow and Tiger game in which everybody stands in a circle with 1/2 people who become the cow and stay within the circle and 2/3 people become the tiger who stand outside the circle. The tigers have to catch the cows by trying to break through the circle and the members forming the circle should try not letting the tigers in. It was loads of fun, noisy and also left some of us hurt . We thought of playing the next game which will involve less physical activity as we were little tired but we ended up playing a game suggested by Mayuko which involved a lot of moving and running. For this game Chairs have to be arranged in a circle and the no. of chairs should be one less in number than the no. of people. One person who is not seated would call out something that is common in all or few of the members (Ex:All those wearing red shirts) and all the members who have similarity to what was called out will have to swap chairs with each other. The person who is not seated finally will be the person who will call out the next commonality. This game was also a lot of fun and we played it till the campfire and dinner was ready. Finally, we had a decent meal and gathered around the campfire where dancing and consumption of liquids went on for a long time
We were able to identify some hidden dancing talents like Vidya and Neha. Special mention for the entertaining show put up by Mayuko,Ajay, Ranjeet and the best couple of the evening—Santosh J and his friend .Most of us hit the bed by 1am and few of us stayed up chatting.

We had decided to do an early morning trek.After seeing the beautiful sunrise we started the trek at 6.30am and went down to the river and walked on the wall of the island which was extremely slippery because of the loose wet mud and then we had to climb up which was the most difficult part because the soil was extremely slippery and bushes on both sides were not a good support to hold on to. It was great fun to do it together and everyone lent out a helping hand to each other. The waters were calm and so clean that it was reflecting the islands and hills around. We got our hands, legs and shoes completely dirty with mud by the time we reached up. We took a short break and decided to go down again to do bamboo rafting. This was very adventurous as we did not have life jackets, the waters were as deep as 100 feet and not all of us knew swimming . A rope was tied to a tree far by to help us row in that direction and while coming back we had to pull the rope and it would bring us back to the shore. It was getting hot by the day and many who were waiting for their turn to get on the raft jumped into the water to cool their system. (Sapna you missed it).We came back and had breakfast which consisted of bread, butter, jam, omelets, puttu and kadala curry,poori and saggu.
We had decided to gather at 11am to have some group building exercises. The first activity was The Cat and the Mouse in which everyone was divided into six teams. Few came up with names for their teams like HHM (Har har Mahadev) and Wild Hogs .

Two teams will start the game together with one team being the mouse and other the cat team. The Mouse team has to reach the mouse hole without getting caught by the cat team. The first two players in both the teams are blindfolded and the last player in each team has to provide only signals which will be passed through the team members to the first person which will direct him or her to move towards the cat team or the mouse hole in case of the mouse team. This was great trust building exercise and involved huge team effort. Some teams turned out to be aggressive which left a few more hurt . The next activity was Balloon Balancing Act. The same teams continued to play this activity as well. Even this game had two teams who started the race towards the finish line. They formed a straight line and had to balance a balloon between the each team member without the support of their hands and without dropping the balloon. It turned out that this game also left many hurt as each team wanted to reach the finish line before the other team. As we had enough of physical activity in two days we decided not to play anymore games and headed to finish our lunch. We received colorful certificates and gifts were given to the winning teams. All of us received smiley badges for participating and keeping up the good spirit. As we finished lunch we packed our bags and played carom while we were waiting for the jeeps to arrive to take us down to our bus. This time nobody was ready to walk down the hill . Just before leaving Seagot it started to rain and the weather transformed beautifully and as the wind blew heavily we could see small waves being formed in the river which was a splendid sight to watch. We hopped into the jeep carrying away all the memories and beautiful sights with us and headed back to Bengaluru. After an afternoon nap we stopped for tea at Gundalpet and by then the driver needed no help to get back home. We played Antakshari for almost 2 hours (thankfully we stopped at Maddur for dinner otherwise it would have continued till Blore ) and everybody except for Neha and Naushad ran out of songs. The aftereffect of this has left Akshi hunting for songs even to till today.

Here are some of the pictures from Bangalore Android Developers / User group’s dev event.

Theme: Have fun with Arduino and Amarino toolkit
Location: TechJini Solutions
Participants: Sudar (Our kit sponsor), Amrita, Krishna, Sandeep (our guide 2), Anil (our guide 1) and Amit

For next event please sign up at http://www.meetup.com/blrdroid/

This is a research of Gartner on worldwide mobile phone sales and rankings given to the manufacturers as well as OS. I thought I need to share this with you.

Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totalled 314.7 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 17 per cent increase from the same period in 2009, according to Gartner, Inc. Smarpthone sales to end users reached 54.3 million units, an increase of 48.7 per cent from the first quarter of 2009. Among the most successful vendors were those that controlled an integrated set of operating system (OS), hardware and services.

“In the first quarter of 2010, smartphone sales to end users saw their strongest year-on-year increase since 2006,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “This quarter saw RIM, a pure smartphone player, make its debut in the top five mobile devices manufacturers, and saw Apple increase its market share by 1.2 percentage points. Android’s momentum continued into the first quarter of 2010, particularly in North America, where sales of Android-based phones increased 707 per cent year-on-year.

Growth in the mobile devices market was driven by double-digit growth of smartphone sales in mature markets, helped by wider product availability as well as mass market price tags. “Increasing sales of white-box products in some emerging regions, in particular India, also drove sales of mobile phones upward. We expect sales of white-box products to remain very healthy for the remainder of 2010, especially outside of China,” said Ms Milanesi.

The first quarter also saw some movement outside the top five mobile handset vendor rankings (see Table 1), Hong Kong-based manufacturer G-Five made its debut into the top 10, grabbing 1.4 per cent of market share in the first quarter of 2010. The rise of white-box manufacturers from Asia has also helped the “others” section, as a proportion of overall sales, increase its market share to 19.20 per cent in the first quarter of 2010, up 2.7 percentage points. “This is having a profound effect on the top five mobile handset manufacturers’ combined share that dropped from 73.3 in the first quarter of 2009 to 70.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2010,” said Ms Milanesi.

Table 1
Worldwide Mobile Terminal Sales to End Users in 1Q10 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (May 2010)

In the first quarter of 2010, Nokia’s mobile phone sales to end users reached 110.1 million units, a 1.2 per cent decline in market share year-on-year. Although Nokia’s midtier products sold well, Nokia lacks a high-volume driver in the high-end. “MeeGo based devices and other high-end products will not rejuvenate Nokia’s premium portfolio until the end of the third quarter of 2010 at the earliest, and Nokia will continue to feel pressure on its average selling price (ASP) from vendors such as HTC, RIM and Samsung,” said Ms Milanesi. The reorganisation announced last week demonstrated that Nokia is trying to streamline the reporting process to deliver results quickly, which we believe shows its recognition of the pressure it faces from investors.

Samsung sold 64.9 million devices in the first quarter of 2010, an increase of 26.3 per cent year-on-year. Samsung was one of the five vendors in the top10 vendors ranking to grow its market share, which increased by 1.5 percentage points year-on-year. Samsung saw healthy margins in the first quarter of 2010 and was also able to grow its presence in developing markets such as India and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

RIM’s mobile phone sales reached 10.6 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 45.9 per cent increase year-on-year. RIM is making its debut into the top five worldwide mobile handset manufacturers ranking. RIM’s focus this quarter was centred on its ecosystem strategy, its tightly integrated control of store, OS and device played to RIM’s strengths.

Sony Ericsson sold enough units to remain in the top five mobile handset manufacturers, but its market share declined 2.3 percentage points in the first quarter of 2010. The channel held some inventory for Sony Ericsson in the first quarter of 2010 as some new products reached the channel late into the quarter. One of Sony Ericsson’s most important future differentiators is its relationship with its parent company, Sony. This partnership, combined with Sony Ericsson’s ownership of the strongest portfolio it has had since 2007, place it well to lead the trend toward increasingly connected consumer devices.

The first quarter of 2010 was Apple’s strongest quarter yet, which placed the company in the No. 7 position with a 112.2 per cent increase in mobile devices sales. “Growth came partly from new communication service providers in established markets, such as the UK, and stronger sales in new markets such as China and South Korea,” said Ms Milanesi. “The second quarter of 2010 will be a very important one for Apple. We expect that Apple will present its new iPhone in June during its Worldwide Developer Conference, which will be the first to feature the latest release of the iPhone OS that includes welcome improvements for developers and users, such as multitasking.”

In the smartphone OS market, Android and Apple were the winners in the first quarter of 2010 (see Table 2). Android moved to the No. 4 position displacing Microsoft Windows Mobile for the first time. Both Android and Apple were the only two OSs vendors among the top five to increase market share year-on-year. Symbian remained in the No. 1 position but continued to lose as Nokia remains weak in the high-end portfolio.

Smartphones accounted for 17.3 per cent of all mobile handset sales in the first quarter of 2010, up from 13.6 per cent in the same period in 2009.

As seen with the iPad and web books based on Google’s Android platform, mobile OS ecosystems are developing and will move beyond smartphones to continue to deliver consumer value and a rich user experience,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner.

Table 2
Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 1Q10 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (May 2010)

Mobile e-mail, rich messaging and social networking will continue to drive demand for smartphones and enhanced phones that feature full qwerty hardware keyboards. “To compete in such a crowded market, manufacturers need to tightly integrate hardware, user interface, and cloud and social networking services if their solutions are to appeal to users,” said Ms Cozza. “Just adding a qwerty keyboard will not make a device fit the communication’s habits of today’s various consumer segments.”

The morale of the research would be to understand the domain of mobile marketing and effectively utilize the advantage to our marketing efforts.

Last weekend we went to The Rappa -An Island Eco Resort located 210 kms away from Bangalore near Hassan. We left Bangalore on the 31^st of October at 7.15am, families were also invited. The bus took the NICE Road till Magadi and we stopped at Kunigal for Breakfast. We played Dumb Charades, Cards, Housie and Antakshari during the journey. We were only few kms away from Rappa when we had to stop our bus as the road ahead was blocked due to temple inauguration in the village. We were invited to join in the festivities as it would take 2 hours to clear the road ……so we decided to do the 30 minutes walk in the afternoon sun accompanied by the cool breeze from the river to reach Rappa. We were welcomed by 3 lovely dogs -Shunti(Pomeranian), Brownie(Golden Retriever) , Shadow(Basset Hound) and another surprise awaiting us was Jack, a mighty horse which was brought to Rappa a month ago. We were so excited to check out our accommodations which were Machans, Tree houses and Swiss Tents spread beside the river. After the walk, we had all worked out a good appetite and so we enjoyed the lunch.

Nobody wanted to rest so we started with the games. We had four teams for each game which were divided earlier and each team came up with team names like Jinis, Shakalaka boom boom , Rainbow, TechJini Warriors, Parasites and Halloween. Yes, Amal we haven’t sensored ‘Shakalaka boom boom’ from being mentioned in this blog

We started with Lagori which was good fun and The Rainbow team won the game….. of course there were lot of fights which added to the fun. It was not tiring enough for few so we decided to play Cricket followed by Foot ball. I guess too much work and no play gave everyone too much energy we didn’t even want to take the tea break. The Sun was setting by then and we were surrounded by good music, chill breeze and everybody settled down on the sand around the campfire under the dark sky, full moon and stars shining bright (which we hardly get to see here due to city light). After soaking into the lovely atmosphere everybody started dancing and singing along with the music. We had hot hot bajjis and chicken kebab served during the campfire. The dancing did not stop till the fire went off and we had dinner around 12. People at Rappa had planned a Night trek for us. We drove 20 kms from Rappa to reach the point where we had to begin the climb to the top of the hill. We started the climb accompanied by the Shunti, Shadow and Brown with the help of Moon Light. There is a temple on top which is opened once a week to worship God. The view from atop was spectacular (Should be clear and better in day light) . We could see other range of hills, forest and Tipu’s Fort below. It was quiet, dark and very cold on top. We sat there, enjoyed the view and listened to the stories of Tipu Sultan and his secret underground path told to us by our Trek Guide(Nagesh). And yes how can I forgot Rohit and Santosh have lost their 4 hours of memory due to too much mixing of water and juice

We came back to Rappa at 4am to catch up on some sleep and were up by 6.30 to do Kayaking. The river is wide and long as it is a place were two rivers meet and there is an island in the middle of the river. Most of us went rowing till the island and some went swimming in the deep waters.

We had a good breakfast of bread, jam, butter, omelet , poori, saagu, orange juice,tea and coffee. We went by the river side to play team building games to encourage bonding among each other. Each team had 6 members in this game and one person was blindfolded. The blindfolded person would lead the line and rest stand behind to pass on the instructions given from the last person. The twist in the game was that no member was allowed to speak. Instructions were to be passed on only through actions. There was a start line and finish line and on the way three objects were placed. The blindfolded person had to pick up these objects and then move ahead to the finish line. The Rainbow team won this game as well. The second game we played was ‘Brick Game’. There were 6 members in each team and were given 4 bricks. Three people had to step only on the bricks and three would move the bricks to make sure those on bricks are moving ahead towards the finish line without stepping on the ground.

We were physically getting tired and people started complaining about body pain so the next game we played was ‘Create an Ad’ where each team had to Create an Ad on the given product , name the product and enact. The products given were Baby Nappies, Glue, Designer Saree, Hair Growth Cream, Fat losing Belt, Detergent Powder and Mouth Freshener. This was real fun and told us a lot about people’s personal life like how is Akshi as a wife, Amit Singh as a husband and how was Rohit’s childhood

It was lunch time by then and we had to check- out after lunch so we packed our bags had lunch and left Rappa half hearted.

Yesterday while driving back home I saw Sapna, one of our PHP team members (almost running) to catch probably what was her last bus. I offered her a lift till her stop and then when I was coming back I thought I will write about ‘GEMS’ / ‘Pillars’ of TechJini. People who make TechJini what it is today, our ‘power performers’. Initially I thought we should have ‘performer of the month’ but then I realized I will end up writing about everyone anyways

Sapna was impressive right from the first question of her interview. We have very strict interview process and have history of upsetting recruitment companies (we keep on asking for candidates but no offers). There was not even a single question which I asked her and she had to think. She always had a way to solve the problem instantly, not always the best way but she always knew in which direction to go. Her interview went for 3 hours then I told Shyamal she is really good. He was pleasantly surprised as I have not said that often so he went to talk to her. He talked to her for another 2 hours. Thats a good sign when Shyamal doesn’t send someone back in first 15 minutes.

She is spontaneous – Always has a solution
She is VERY hard working – Travels daily for 2 hours (one way) in ‘local transport’ and usually one of the last ones to leave office. And yes mostly among early comers too.
Extremely dedicated – She is one of few persons I have never seen taking a break.
Desire to learn – Never settles with the solutions, she always wants to know why? how?
Dependable – If any work is assigned to her, you can be sure it will be done and she will not rest until its done.
Proactive and Responsible – Even when she was over loaded she volunteered to take up second project.
She is very emotional – She scared everyone on her first day when she started crying during our group lunch. She was missing her colleagues from old company.

We thought she was a very serious person until we went on our river trip. It was so difficult to get her out of the water Sapna is one of our ‘jinis’