Shashank Rana » google http://shashankrana.com from a wandering mind... Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:10:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Android on HD2 http://shashankrana.com/2010/08/android-on-hd2/ http://shashankrana.com/2010/08/android-on-hd2/#comments Mon, 02 Aug 2010 21:07:48 +0000 shashank http://shashankrana.com/2010/08/android-on-hd2/ Windows Mobile and HTC make the best phone combination, which is difficult for any other company to match. I got an HD2 as a gift sometime back and I have been in love with the machine. It has a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor which is the fastest available at the moment. Add to it the half gig RAM,  which is one full gig in some versions, and you have a phone faster than my some laptops available in the market.
The icing on the cake however is the HTC sense interface, which makes the otherwise dull Windows Mobile intuitive and interesting. HTC sense that is a part of these phones is called Manila and it is in it’s version 3 as far as I remember. It is a set of screens,  which help you in doing your commonly used tasks on the phone like messaging, tweeting, Facebook surfing, email access, weather and stock reports etcetera. This makes using the phone a charm and I have been in love with it since my HTC Diamond. I have used two other HTC phones before this HD2, Diamond and 3300. I loved the fact that Windows Mobile could access Hotmail and other Windows Live Mail accounts in real-time, like blackberry. This was the only reason I bought WinMo because a Blackberry and the service cost seemed too expensive at that time.
I was happy with my WinMo and the fact that I could change the phone at any time, well virtually, with a new flavor of WinMo, thanks to XDA-developers. This is one of the most active and most amazing community support system a company can dream of. I visit XDA developers website more times in a day than I opened HTC site in my entire life. This community introduced me to something more exciting for my phone, Android.
I found out one day that rooted Android images could be used to boot HD2 to power this device. I needed to have a big enough memory card and the courage to run a half baked operating system on my phone. Of course, I had both!!
I downloaded a folder with all the files in it, browsed it from my file manager in WinMo, ran clcrad and haret.exe and Viola! I had android on the phone. I skipped the parts where the phone didn’t boot initially and I for once thought that the phone bricked! All in all, I never imagined that the process could be that simple. Or should I say that the people worked really hard to make sure that it was simple for people like me, who had literally no knowledge of Linux or coding.
I am enjoying the seventh ROM now, with almost everything working on the phone. I can’t connect to my Ford Connection over Bluetooth to listen to songs or make phone calls, the battery life seems to be a concern and the phone responds a bit slowly at times but it is probably this particular build.
I am loving the entire Linux experience and the sheer beauty of Android. More than anything, I am enjoying the feel that I am using something entirely developed by the people for the people. I can not thank XDA team enough and I believe HTC should be exalted that people so selflessly work to make their products better.
I will be willing to help anyone who is trying to install Android on HD2. You can write in the comments and I will be glad to assist in whatever little way I can.

Written on the WordPress application for Android!!

]]> http://shashankrana.com/2010/08/android-on-hd2/feed/ 1 You Need to be Connected to remain Disconnected! http://shashankrana.com/2009/04/you-need-to-be-connected-to-remain-disconnected/ http://shashankrana.com/2009/04/you-need-to-be-connected-to-remain-disconnected/#comments Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:29:20 +0000 shashank http://shashank.asia/2009/04/you-need-to-be-connected-to-remain-disconnected/ Please bear with me as I give the background of this story.

I was trying to look for a nice template for Zen Cart, which I have installed for the new domain, ITShopIndia.com. This site is supposed to be a place where the buyers of Computer parts and Accessories can connect directly with the suppliers and manufacturers and get products at wholesale prices. I reached the site of Kuroi Web Design, which has demos of free Zen-Cart templates. To appreciate the service by Kuroi Web Design, I decided to Tweet the page using Twitthis. I started to browse the top twitted pages and found a nice article by Seth Godin, the marketing guru. Phew!

The article is about personal branding and the Google effect. It talks about three people who applied for a job and how Google revealed the truth behind their claims. It is important to realize that privacy has a new meaning in the Internet era. People may think that they can disconnect their lives by not signing up to FaceBook, Orkut, MySpace and the likes, but it is not true.

Recently, I was seeing my own profile on FaceBook and realized that someone had tagged me in a photo. With over 2 billion photos uploaded, almost everyone in the world who has ever been clicked must have been tagged at least once, or will be tagged soon. It is true that you can restrict people from tagging you in pictures but you need to have a FaceBook profile for that!

You need to be on the network to ensure that you are not on the network!

It is difficult to remain behind closed doors when there is someone on the prowl all the time. The crawling spiders will not let any stone unturned. It is better that you are in control of the situation and manage your Online Profile judiciously. Even if you consider your privacy very important, just ensure that you have a decent public profile available to those who seek it, lest they will have to settle for what is made available to them.

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