_Alhamdulillah, now you can get the prayer times ( namaz times, salat times ) of your place via sms. Yes, prayer times can be obtained on any phone, not just android - anywhere in the world.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO

sms salat<SPACE><YOUR ADDRESS> to +919495594478 to get today's prayer times for the address specified

EXAMPLE

1) Prayer times of kottayam, kerala, india can be obtained by SMSing
      salat kottayam,kerala,india

2) Prayer times of bangalore, india can be obtained by SMSing
     salat bangalore,karnataka,india

3) Prayer times at New York , USA can be obtained by SMSing
   salat new york, usa

NOTE

This service is absolutely FREE. However you might incur sms charges as per your service provider. The number - +919495594478 is registered in india. Those who avail this service from outside india might be charged for international sms as per your service provider.

Please let me know if you face any difficulties using this service. Also. please provide your feedback as to how we can improve this service for you.

Mobile phones are powerful devices. They are small computers. They may have all sort of extra fittings too. They can talk via GSM/CDMA. They may have bluetooth. They have a screen for display. They can read memory cards. Some even have cameras. Excetra and etc.

Here at mobware4u, we think about innovative ideas to recycle old mobile phones. We bring out ideas to utilize these old phones to develop products that can make our lives better. Recycling or reusing these old phones, rather than throwing them away, we hope to make this world a better place.

Here are some ideas :-

1) Some old java phones can be used as remote monitoring camera. They can be programmed to take photos or capture audio/video and stream them to a server. Why waste money on expensive CCTV cameras!

2) Can be used as an alarm clock or timer.

3) Those that have GPRS can be used to stream internet radio to your homes.

4) If connected to your computer they can be interfaced to softwares like skype/gtalk. Imagine talking to a person on skype/gtalk through your phone.

5) Can we used as a 'Calling Bell' for your house.

6) Can be used to control external devices like your tubelight or motor or fan if properly interfaced to a relay mechanism. Imagine controlling your light with a miss call or sms.

7) Those that have bluetooth can be used as a bluetooth broadcaster, broadcasting advertisement and details using bluetooth.
 Some ideas :-
    a) Can be placed on a bus to broadcast its time table
    b) Can be placed near advertisement boards to provide more information about the ad - its video or audio or images
    c) Can be placed at any centers to provide informations to customers.

8) Can be used as an internet modem connecting your computer to 3G or GPRS.

The possibilities are endless. Just dont throw away your old phone yet. Let us know if you have an idea too.

Right now, maybe 'right now' is the not the right word, lets say - 'Right a period now' or 'Right a few days now', i have been thinking about using android to do something that would benefit the society.

Now that is not a joke. I know everybody is making apps for US and earning dollars. But how often do we make apps for us. I stay in Kottayam now. I was thinking about all the wonderful things that we could do to make a persons life better here.

Ofcourse, we are poor and not many of us have android phones or tablets here. We are working hard to earn our daily meal. Ofcourse, we dont have time to talk technology. But then, a few of us have to find time so that we can help others find time and bring happiness to their lives.

What we need :-
 a) An idea that will save/help/improve person or people condition
 b) The technical know how of how to implement the idea using latest technologies
 c) The knowledge and wisdom to make that possible using the least resource, least money , reducing wastage but providing maximum output.
 d) The motivation and the will to do it.

I believe strongly that android can be used for that. Here are some of my ideas for problems at my place. Let me know if you have an idea to solve an issue at your place and we can discuss it.

Here are some examples :-

1) I have a railway cross near to where I stay. Its where the road meets the railway line. A lot of trains go through that railway. Most of time people are just waiting for the train to cross. A gate closes 5 - 10 mins prior to when the train is about to pass preventing any vehicle to pass. All the road will then wait for the train to cross. After which, the gate opens and traffic resumes.

There are junctions before railway cross having an alternate route to bypass the railway cross. Those can be a better decision to save time, if the gate is closed. If the gate is open, then its better to cross through it.

If we have a mechanism through which we can inform others whether the gate is open/close at those junctions then we can help them make that decision to take the alternate route. This would save them a lot of time. its important to mention that this route goes all the way to the Medical College here. So we can save Ambulances from waiting on the gate too or if its open then they can reach the hospital much quicker.

Android can be used here. :-)

2) Medical College OP TICKET

We have a medical college near to where I stay. Its a government run medical college and 1000s of patients per day. Each patient has to take a Out Patient Ticket - OP Ticket before seeing the doctor. The OP ticket gives the patient an token number which is the order in which they can see the doctor. The queue is pretty big for the OP ticket. Its sad to see all those people waiting just for the ticket, considering that they can be sick too.

Why cant we save their time or help them with the android technology?

3) Medical College doctors

The condition of the doctors are not good here. There is always a shortage of doctors considering the number of patients that visit the hospital. The hospital  is always full. Most of the valuable time of these doctors are spent in recording the patient details than in actually treating the patients. If we have a mechanism to help them record the patient details - either using medical transcription techniques or others, then we can save their time. They can spent more time with the patients and their family.

Let me know if you have an idea to save the world. Lets discuss it and lets start studying it and implementing it. We can also consider doing these projects as a part of your training. That way, you earn your experience for a nobel cause and I earn my reward from Almighty God.

Had a wonderful time discussing android with College of engineering, chengannur. We also had a hands on section where students learned how to develop apps. I had a great time. Thanks a lot guys. You did a wonderful job organizing it. Also a marvelous job, being patient and hearing me talk. ;-)

A section - syllabus have been included in this website. Lot of people are asking about that. They are the ingredients that make the Android biriyani. The topics are not final and can be modified or changed as needed.

There is a lot to learn in android. The idea is to get you started and train you so that you can work independently.

Remember,  at the end of the training, if you perform good. We need you.

Let me know if you have any queries or additions or modifications.

There is a new one coming. Check it out :-http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/preview/

Is collecting information about other's evil ? Is it evil even if the other person knows that the information is being collected?

Is it evil to kill someone? Is it evil to kill someone if you tell him in advance that you are going to kill him?

Is it evil that somebody spies on your dear ones?

Thinking positively, we can say that it is exciting. Its like taking part in a action packed - high technology hollywood movie or like a video game. We are the actors and we are being shot at. So we need to escape. And some body out there is playing this video game.

Google was all for DO NO EVIL. Is it going out of their hands. Maybe it is. That is what happens when you grow big. Maybe Google is sending us a message through these policies, telling us not to use their services.

But who is this 'Google' anyway? A bunch of people who are working just like the rest of us to survive. How can they be google! They are not google, Google is the people who make the decisions out there. i wonder what happens if somebody decides to quit Google, will they be shot at! Thank God, i am not there.

Think twice before buying a google phone. Or get it rooted and remove all google services from it. There are alternatives available in the market, if not let us know, we can help build it for you.

Use an ordinary Nokia phone that doesnt have color and doesnt have internet connection. Better still - dont use a mobile phone.

This is from their blog:-

We collect information in two ways:

Information you give us. For example, many of our services require you to sign up for a Google Account. When you do, we’ll ask for personal information, like your name, email address, telephone number or credit card. If you want to take full advantage of the sharing features we offer, we might also ask you to create a publicly visible Google Profile, which may include your name and photo.

Information we get from your use of our services. We may collect information about the services that you use and how you use them, like when you visit a website that uses our advertising services or you view and interact with our ads and content. This information includes:

    Device information   We may collect device-specific information (such as your hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers, and mobile network information including phone number). Google may associate your device identifiers or phone number with your Google Account. 

• • Log information
  • 
    When you use our services or view content provided by Google, we may automatically collect and store certain information in server logs. This may include:
    
    
    • details of how you used our service, such as your search queries.
    • telephony log information like your phone number, calling-party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls, duration of calls, SMS routing information and types of calls.
    • Internet protocol address.
    • device event information such as crashes, system activity, hardware settings, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and referral URL.
    • cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your Google Account.
  • Location information
    
    When you use a location-enabled Google service, we may collect and process information about your actual location, like GPS signals sent by a mobile device. We may also use various technologies to determine location, such as sensor data from your device that may, for example, provide information on nearby Wi-Fi access points and cell towers.
    
    
  • Unique application numbers
    
    Certain services include a unique application number. This number and information about your installation (for example, the operating system type and application version number) may be sent to Google when you install or uninstall that service or when that service periodically contacts our servers, such as for automatic updates.
    
    
  • Local storage
    
    We may collect and store information (including personal information) locally on your device using mechanisms such as browser web storage (including HTML 5) and application data caches.
    
    
  • Cookies and anonymous identifiers
    
    We use various technologies to collect and store information when you visit a Google service, and this may include sending one or more cookies or anonymous identifiers to your device. We also use cookies and anonymous identifiers when you interact with services we offer to our partners, such as advertising services or Google features that may appear on other sites.
    
    

New weekly class starting on Jan 28th - saturday insha allah. Class includes Java training also. Those interested please register immediately. Class will be conducted every week - on saturday.

God has blessed us with eyes. Then we should use it.

A strong foundation and strong basics are very essential for android application development. Programming or implementation as its called in software development terminology is just one skill that you would need to master. Having the right foundation and right basics in place will make the 'programming' easy for you.

Trust me. These parts are more interesting that programming. The next skill that i would like you to master is that of VISUALIZATION. This would be easy for some but harder for others. But its skill and it can be mastered like any other by proper practice and training.

Visualization is a very important part of android application development. No books will teach you this. No other courses would tell you this. Its something that you are expected to have. Visualization helps you Visualize things without actually Seeing them. From android application point of view, you would need to visualize how the application is supposed to work and how it should look like even before it has been implemented.

If you are bad at this, dont worry, here are some tips to improve your visualization skill. Try to repeat the following exercises whenever you can.

REMEMBER ALL THE EXERCISES BELOW SHOULD BE PERFORMED WITH YOU EYES OPEN. YOU MAY FOCUS AT SOMETHING IN FRONT OF YOU. BUT KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AND DO NOT BLINK.

1) Try to recollect something which you had seen a long time back. It maybe a car, or a place that your had visited. Try to see it in your mind . Now DO NOT CLOSE YOU EYES. Most of us tend to do so. But dont do that! Try to visualize each minor details of it.

2) Look at an object in front on you. Observe it. Now in another direction so that you dont see that object anymore. With your eyes open, visualize that object. Try to see it as it was before.

Keep doing it. Try different things each time. This can be very good time pass too.

Don't worry if you are finding this difficult. Some people can do this easily than others. Its ok if you can't do it. The important thing is to understand the areas in which we are strong and those in which we are weak. If you find this difficult, all you have to do is to get some one who is good at this :-). They are called artists or graphic designers. They usually can do this easily. Ask them to visualize and design the screens for you.

More tips on an another blog...insha allah.