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Nias traditional wear (Photo: Private archive) The pain and beyond If you have ever typed a lot in Nias language, you must have felt the pain I had had with it. Whether you type on a smartphone screen or on a PC keyboard, the keyboard does not feature the characters ö and ŵ which are frequently found in Nias vocabulary. The existing solution is cumbersome to carry out. On a smartphone keyboard you would get those characters by long-pressing the letter o and w to get letter ö and ŵ respectively. On a PC people usually use the combination shortcuts (like Alt+1945 or whatever). And if you have ever typed long texts in Nias language, you must have known that both solutions are not convenient at all and they basically slow down the typing flow. But that's only one side of the story. Looking further it seems that Nias language is virtually absent from the Internet and social media. People with Nias mother tongue and others with Nias language skills don't communic...

Have you been looking for ways how to stream your media files to your digital radio like the sexy Pure Sensia ? Then you aren't alone. I'll show you in the following how I did it in simple way. First, what is the requirement? Well basically nothing, provided that you use Ubuntu like me. I also take for granted that you have a WiFi for internet connection and all your media files (Music, Pictures and Videos) are already kept safe in your PC/laptop.

I write email and reports in English, German and Indonesian. And it annoys me that there are no German umlauts, EURO and Sterling signs on the US keyboard of my laptop (Asus UL20A). I'd been looking for ways how to map those characters on the keyboard, but no simple solution was around. Until I stumbled upon this solution from Lars Michelsen . And it's so simple! Thank to Lars! Here how I did it following the instruction from Lars:

I've been an Ubuntu user for almost ten years now. I love its simplicity, light, fast and user-friendly approach. Sometimes I try Fedora and SuSE, but somehow both of them have always had problem here and there with my laptop (first Toshiba PM500 and then Asus UL20A ) and they never convinced me to move away from Ubuntu. Therefore I've always recommended Ubuntu to my friends and all of them haven't regretted it.

I'm very happy with the latest update of Android. First Google updated my Nexus One a few days ago via OTA. Suddently I saw Gingerbread 2.3.6 (GRK39F) took control of my phone. I was wondering, what was new in this version. I didn't see any. But here it is:

Yes, they come! The android tablets are populating some gadget shops. Yesterday I visited two stores in Ealing Broadway shopping center: Currys Digital and Carphonewarehouse . First I entered Currys Digital. I was surprised that there were four android tablets: Motorola Xoom, Acer Iconia A500, Samsung Galaxy Tab, and Advent Vega. The Toshiba Folio I saw few days ago had disappeared. Unfortunately I couldn't play with those tablets. There was no Internet connection, so it was useless to do a test, because without Internet connection it was impossible to play with browsing, email, contact, calendar, android market etc.. And inside there were hardly any apps.

At the CES 2011 in Las Vegas the whole show seems to be the tablet's musical. Will tablets devices replace the notebooks and PCs? No, Intel's Mooly Eden said to techradar.com . Tablets devices will be "a mainly complementary device rather than replacing the notebook". Maybe he is true. But from my own experience I would say it might be. I'll tell you why.

It seems difficult, but in reality it isn't. I read in the Samsung Galaxy Tab forums that many people have problem flashing the new EURO ROM P1000XXJM6 . I flashed the new ROM straight forward without any problem. So I want to share the steps I followed. Notes: There are different types of Galaxy Tab available. Please make sure that you have EURO version if you want to follow the steps below. I got my Samsung Galaxy Tab from carphonewarehouse.co.uk (it offers the cheapest GTab in the UK. If you buy the keyboard together with GTab you pay only half).

For those who try to stand outside the commercialisation trend of our world, it is amazing to see what the community of open source software   and free software movement could do. Many people work together and contribute to a better software without the main concern for profit. One of them is xda developers . They and the others show us that there is a world of humanity beyond the commercialised world. I just realised this when I was trying the work of the community around Android , which has modified the look of my Nexus One to be like iPhone. As an iPhone 3GS owner I can say that this one is even better than the iPhone. Why? Read more

I bet that the iPhone users and other mobile phones are envy if they look at the new UI of my Nexus One. The appearance of my Google Nexus One has now transformed into that of HTC Desire . I got this after I deleted the previous ROM and replaced it with the new one from a xda developer called Evil's NXSense . I even impressed somebody in the cinema last week, who amazed said, "Wow, you've got a Desire?" (You know, Desire is now the best mobile phone in the UK). As the screen-shots below show it, the new UI is really beautiful. Read more here . Although I like the new mod, I personally prefer to use the ROM version of CyanogenMod . CyanogenMod has built into the ROM some extra tweak settings that I miss in the other ROM. It is good so. Android user has more choice than the others!

In the previous article I wrote about my experience with Google applications Calendar, Contacts and Gmail on Nexus One . This time I will write about my experience with Google Translate , built-in web browser , and news application. An exciting user experience. Of course I'll show also the screen-shots. Life hasn't been so easy and mobile phone hasn't been so fun to use. Read more here .

I've been using three leading smart-phones for a while now and I want to share my experience. The three are Apple iPhone 3GS (iOS4) , Google Nexus One (Android) , and Nokia E72 (Symbian) . I used to be heavy Nokia fan and was a proud owner of almost all its best smart-phones (E90, N95, N97, E71, E72). Unfortunately Nokia E72 lost the competition against iPhone 3GS and Google Nexus One. With its Symbian Nokia E72 seems to be out of date, so that I always left it home. After using the other two smart-phones browsing and IMAP experience on E72 feels really frustrating. The other two are more advanced in terms of innovation and technology and therefore can accompany my day everywhere. I the following I'll show some screen-shots and brief description of my excellent user experience on Nexus One. Read more here .

As Nexus One owner most probably you don't know, that it is possible to listen to FM Radio with it. Basically you can't, because the stock kernel doesn't support it and there is no application available. I don't know whether Google knew it and has done it on purpose: the Nexus One chip is capable of receiving FM radio signal. How? Read more here . Yesterday I downloaded the newest ROM from CyanogenMod and was surprised that among some new added apps I found a new application called FM Radio . I tried it and it worked perfectly (see the picture). While writing this article I was listening to BBC2 Radio, which was reporting about the huge spending cuts programmes of the UK government approved in the parliament yesterday (20/10/2010).

Google is profit -company, but it has a totally different approach compare to other companies. As if Google bridges two worlds, has one foot on the profit side and other foot on the non-profit side. Non-profit organisations define itself by providing its services for free for better world, better humanity. But they are not alone now. Although a profit company Google provides a broad spectrum of services for free too and makes other profit and non-profit organisations make profit out of Google services. Google Maps, Gmail, Calendar, Google Apps, Google Earth, and a lot more; Android, Chrome, Google TV and so on; Google releases them all for free. Imagine how many people, organisations and governments are using Google services and therefore keeping the cost low. Even if you hate Google, you can't help but acknowledging this. No other company has contributed so much for better world and better humanity like Google. Even if Microsoft donated recently 2 million dollar for education,...