HyperSynapse

The Last Post

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Sun, 12 Oct 2014 18:45:00 +0000

Well, it has been a while since I posted something on Hypersynapse. Since I've noticed that there still is some traffic around the site, I thought it would be a good idea to have an official blog closing post so that I can explain what I'm up too and offer some closure.

In the time that passed since the last post I had to shift my priorities and focus on other things that are important in my life. That left little time for blogging, so I ended up not posting anymore here. However, lately I got a craving to set blogging on higher priority, so I started a new personal site/blog. If there are people still interested in what I have to say, make sure you check out Android Sensei, my new blog about Android, Life, the Universe and Everything :).

This being said, it is time to properly close hypersynapse.blogspot.com. I think I am going to leave the site open for a few more months until I manage to migrate stuff that I deem important to the new blog, but I won't be writing any new posts here. After that, I will just delete the blog from Blogger.

Thanks for reading and hope to see you on Android Sensei.

Shopping Assistant User Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 18:20:00 +0000

Since we've just finished the first version of our shopping list management application for Android and we are still in the process of getting a proper site, I am going to add the user guide for Shopping Agent as a post in my blog for the time being.
Before I dive into the specifics of the application, I would like to add the following disclaimer for those of you who want to download and use the application from the Android Market.

This software is freeware and is provided 'as-is', WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

In the hopes that you will find this application useful, here is a short user guide. For any inquiries or suggestions you can email us at hypersynapse.support@gmail.com. We're also available on twitter - follow @sh0passistant to get tips on how to use the application and provide us feedback on the application.

The application has 3 tabs with the in which the users can manage their shopping lists, do the actual shopping or see reports of their previous shopping sessions.

1. The shopping list management tab (Shop Lists)

You can create a new shopping list by entering it's name in the List Name text field and pressing the Create button, or you can use the Import button to load a previously exported list from your device's SD card.

In order to add items in your newly created shopping list, you can use the View/Add items context menu on your list, which will bring you to a new screen where item details can be entered.

Tip: categories can be isles from your preferred supermarket, that way it will be easier to filter when shopping in the store.

The import and export functionality can be used for passing lists around to other users. For example, one user can create a shopping list that she wants to send to somebody else, and use the Export context menu on the list to save it to the device's SD card and then mail it to another user who can use the Import functionality to load it in her application

2. The Shop View tab

On the Shop View tab you can use the List and Category drop downs, to select the list from which you want to buy the items and the category/isle on which you want to go. Once the items are filtered, you will see them in the list with check boxes next to them. If you tap on the check box next to an item, you will be taken to the next dialog which will allow you to enter some info about the item such as a price and an expiration date and you can edit the quantity of an item if needed.

The application will compute your total cost for a shopping list so at the end of the shopping session you will be able to know how much you need to pay.
If you are buying an item that expires, you can enter the expiration date and on that day, you will get a notification in the notification bar of your device, that your item expires. If the item is non expiring, don't forget to check the Non Expiring Item check box.

Warning: If the device gets booted after you set an expiration notification, the notification won't show on the expiration day - this is currently the default behavior of Android alarms which get reset when the device is booted, and we're working on a workaround for this small inconvenience.

Tip: There currently are no units for quantity and for items such as fruit or vegetables, which are sold based on weight, you can just add 1 as the quantity, and when you weigh them, you can add your total as the item price.

3. The Reports tab

On this tab you can see various statistics about your shopping sessions. You can choose one of the reports available in the Report drop down and you will see a corresponding statistic. This is helpful if you like to keep track of your expenses and see what were your most bought items.
In order to be able to see any reports of your previously bought items, you should first close all the shopping lists you have already bought from the Shop Lists tab, by using the list context menu -> Close.

4. The Application Settings
When pressing the device menu key, you will be presented with the application's settings menu. If you tap on the menu, you will access the settings of the application.

There currently are 2 settings that can be changed: the Notification Start Time, which will be the time at which you want your expiration notifications to go off in the day the items expire and the Limit Top Reports which is the number of items to be shown in your Top Frequency and Top Expensive reports.

Presenting Aegis Shield

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:48:00 +0000

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you may remember me mentioning my password manager application for Android, Aegis Shield. The thing is, that in March, I have finished version 1.0 of the application, and I wanted to publish it in the Android Market, but since there are some rules regarding applications that use encryption to which you must agree when publishing to Google's Android apps store and I was unsure if Aegis Shield respects them, I decided not to publish it for the time being. By the way, if you know the US export laws regarding software that uses encryption, I would really appreciate some insights on that. I am especially interested to see if Aegis Shield can be exported as software without any special permissions from the US Government.
   This being said, I would like to add a description of what Aegis Shield does together with some screen shots and with a QR encoded URL from where you can download it and try it on your phone.
   As I mentioned, Aegis Shield is a password manager which basically allows you to keep the user/password combination for your various Internet and computer accounts, all in one place and encrypted under a master password.
   Main features of the applications are:

Having a master password that is not saved on the device. The way this works is by saving an encrypted version of a check text when first entering the master password, and then each time when you log in the text gets decrypted and it is compared with the clear text. If they are the same, you are allowed to log in the application. For now, there is no way to change or reset the master password, so please make sure you remember it well, because otherwise you won't be able to use the application.
It allows you to enter information about your accounts and offers the possibility of automatically generating the password.
You will see an overview of all your accounts which will allow you to view/edit the account information by means of a long press on the account list item.
Your chosen password strength will be measured and shown.
Accounts can be edited or deleted.

Before some screen shots and help information on how to use the application, here is the download URL encoded as a QR code:

The main/master password entering screen.

This screen appears only the first time you run the application, and it asks you to enter the master password twice. After that, you will only see a single password entering field each time you use the application.

The add account information screen.

Here you will enter your account information such as the account name, an optional description and the user/password combination. You also have the possibility to automatically generate a strong password, using the "Generate Password" button. Once you finish adding the account info, you can click on the "Create Account" button and the info will be stored locally on your device, with the password for the account encrypted, using the master password as a private key. After pressing the "Create Account" button, the fields will be cleared, so you can enter another account. If you finish adding accounts you can go to the account overview screen by pressing the "Account Overview" button.

The account overview screen.

In the account overview screen, you can see the whole list of your accounts and when long pressing on an account in the list, you will be presented with the Add/Edit/Delete menu you can see above, that will allow you to do the respective operations. If you want to view or edit the info of an account, just press the Edit button, which will take you to the next screen.

The edit/view account info screen.

   Here you can view or edit the information for an account. Password is initially hidden, but you can tap and hold the field to reveal it.

   Finally I would like to add some information about the licensing of the application which is GPLv3 and a disclaimer.
   If you decide to download and use the application, you automatically agree to the GPLv3 license terms, of which a short description is provided below:

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses

Feel free to download and use it, but remember that this is free software and it comes with no warranty. However I do believe that there is room for improvements, so feedback is appreciated. You can either email me at hypersynapse.support[at]gmail.com or add some comments to this blog post.

Scrisoare deschisa catre organizatorii HTC Romanian Android Challenge si participantilor.

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 20:16:00 +0000

Salutare,

   Ma numesc Mihai Campean, si sunt co-autor la aplicatia myShoppingList, aplicatie care a fost inscrisa in competitia HTC Romanian Android Challenge inainte de termenul final initial de 31 Mai 2010.
   Dupa cum se stie, datorita faptului ca au fost destul de putine aplicatii inscrise pana la acest termen, organizatorii au decis sa prelungeasca termenul de inscriere cu inca o luna, pana pe data de 30 Iunie 2010, pentru a putea permite si altor participanti sa dezvolte si sa inscrie aplicatii in concurs.
   Cu toate ca inteleg rationamentul organizatorilor si respect dorinta lor de a atrage mai multe aplicatii in competitie, fapt care sa incurajeze si dezvoltatorii de aplicatii pentru Android locali, mie personal mi se pare putin incorecta decizia fata de cei care au depus un efort sa isi inscrie aplicatiile inainte de termenul initial, probabil unii dintre ei afland despre competitie cu intarziere, si care probabil ar dori o sansa sa faca niste imbunatatiri calitative la aplicatiile lor, in loc sa se gandeasca la idei noi fiind motivati de faptul ca pot sa inscrie mai multe aplicatii in concurs pentru ca pe cea deja inscrisa nu o pot modifica.
Intr-adevar pentru cei care acum incep, nu ar fi corect ca noua, celor deja inscrisi sa ni se permita mai mult timp de lucru, dar in situatia data, cred ca s-a ales corectitudinea pentru cei noi inscrisi in detrimentul, zic eu, celor care au inscris deja aplicatii, cu toate ca au posibilitatea de a inscrie si altele. Datorita faptului ca toti care au inscris aplicatiile inainte de primul termen, au investit efort de timp si probabil si emotional in dezvoltarea aplicatiilor, sunt de parere ca ar fi mai corect daca s-ar proceda in felul urmator:
Sa se permita si celor inscrisi inainte de primul terment o perioada de 2 saptamani pentru un update iar, ca sa fie corect si pentru nou veniti si daca tot se prelungeste perioada inscrierilor, sa se prelungeasca noua cu inca 2 saptamani dupa 30 Iunie. In cele 2 saptamani de prelungire, celor ce se inscriu pana la 30 Iunie, sa li se permita timp pentru un update. Cred ca se poate face destul de usor acest lucru, daca se foloseste Android Market-ul pentru a lua aplicatiile de catre juriu, verificand data la care s-a facut prima inscriere (impreuna cu descrierile si celelalte cerinte de pe site-ul competitiei) si apoi data update-ului.
V-as ruga pe cei care ati inscris aplicatii inainte de primul termen, si cititi acest blog, sa va spuneti parerile in comentarii, si sa mentionati daca sunteti de acord, apoi sa trimitem linkul organizatorilor. Va rog sa pastrati fair play-ul in comentarii si sa nu faceti remarci belicoase, agresive sau deplasate la adresa organizatorilor sau a celorlalti participanti/comentatori. Ce doresc prin aceasta scrisoare deschisa este sa ne facem auzita vocea, iar daca lucrurile se vor schimba sau nu, asta ramane de vazut, dar cred ca ar fi bine sa ne spunem parerea.

Cu respect,
Mihai Campean

UPDATE: 10 Iunie 2010
   Dupa cum deja este cunoscut, organizatiorii Romanian Android Challenge au decis pana la urma sa dea un ragaz de o saptamana celor care au inscris aplicatiile in primul val pentru a face un update in cazul in care doresc acest lucru.
   Desi parerile concurentilor pe aceasta tema sunt impartite, unii considerand ca nu e corect fata de restul lumii sa se faca acest update, noi am considerat ca este mai bine sa profitam de aceasta saptamana pentru a imbunatati o aplicatie deja existenta si a face un update, decat sa incercam sa lucram la altceva si sa ramanem cu doua aplicatii mai slabe calitativ doar de dragul de a avea mai multe sanse in concurs.
   Cu aceasta ocazie am si redenumit aplicatia myShoppingList in Smart Shopper, deoarece in Android Market mai exista o aplicatie numita My Shopping List, si nu am vrut sa creem conflicte sau confuzii, motiv pentru care am decis sa ne numim aplicatia altfel.
   Odata ce termenul de 30 Iunie (speram ca nu se mai modifica) se implineste, si se da voie ca aplicatiile sa fie votate de utilizatori, daca doriti sa ne ajutati in drumul spre a castiga un HTC Desire, va asteptam sa va uitati sau sa va instalati aplicatia, si daca considerati ca merita un vot, sa o votati pe site-ul Romanian Android Challenge.

A glimpse in myShoppingList

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Mon, 31 May 2010 17:02:00 +0000

UPDATE (June 1st 2010): The deadline for the Romanian Android Challenge has been extended until the end of June, so if you want to vote the applications in the competition, I think it is best to hold until the entering of applications period is over.

Hello my loyal readers, this one is going to be a short glimpse in one of my Android applications - not the Aegis Shield password manager, another one :).
The idea for this application started last year before the second Google Android Developers Challenge, and we wanted to add so many things to it but gradually we gave some of them up and we arrived to the usable version we have today. Even so, we did not make the Android Developers Challenge so we left the app be for a while, did not work too much on it. Keep in mind that this also was a side project so development on it is on "when I have time basis" - after all a guy's gotta make a living somehow :) .
The fortunate circumstance that made us push the application forward to a usable version was the Romanian Android Challenge, organized by HTC Romania, which even if it doesn't have the financial rewards of the Google Android Developers Challenge, still motivated me and my friend Bogdan, with whom I worked on this application for most of the time, to finish it and enter it in the competition.
We know that the application isn't perfect - we do have a list of known bugs and of user experience improvements we want to implement but it is a step forward in the right direction, and what I want to do here is allow all of you who read my blog a glimpse on the application. Currently it is available in the Android Market but only for Romania, so if you are in Romania and want to check it out and give us some feedback, search for it using this url (remember to use your Android enabled phone). What we intend to do, after the competition is over (in about 10 days), which gives us some more time to fix some remaining things, is to have a release for all the locations in the Android Market and with the English version.
When that is done, I'll add a new post with some instructions on how to use it. Meanwhile, you can checkout some screen shots and if you are in Romania, you can check out the application's challenge page on the competition site and if you like the application, starting tomorrow you can vote for it.

P.S. I believe we are going to rename the application to something other than myShopping list, since it seems that there already is an application with the name My Shopping List available in the Andorid Market and we do want to avoid any confusion that this may cause, but for now, the name is myShoppingList and the application is only limited to users in Romania.

Backlog for the Last Months

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:58:00 +0000

Even though there hasn't been much activity on my blog for the past few months, I am always up to something in the background, joggling with my spare time between family, friends and my hobbies (which include coding), so in this post I am going give you a quick glimpse at what I've been up too coding and technology wise :).
November and December last year were the months of presentations. I held a pesentation of Google Android Basics, freely available on prezi.com (just follow the link), to a student organization in Cluj in November and to the local JUG (Transylvania Java User Group) in December. The presenation was somewhat sucessful based on the large number of participants and not on my public speaking skills :) (I hope it was useful for the people who participated), and it contained a short introduction into the Android platfrom from a developer's perspective, with a demo based on my Aegis Shield project, hosted on Google code.
Meanwhile I continued working on Aegis Shield and on myShopping list of which Aegis Shield 1.0 was completed yesterday, and it will be published as a free appliation in the Android Market in the coming days. Until then, if you would like to try it you can download the apk from the Google code hosting site of the project, listed above. Please do let me know if you find it useful, if it has bugs, or if you would like to add some improvements. Development time for me is fairly limited, so you are more than wellcome to participate with code if you're interested.
I've also been keeping in touch with Adrian Cole - owner of jclouds cloud service accessing framework - since he is interested in porting jclouds to Android. For that I've started the jclouds-android Google code project which is supposed to be a simple twitter client on Android that uses jclouds to get the twitter feed of a user. However, progress on this field has been slow lately mostly due to my lack of time, but we got to a place where we concluded that we need to compile the jclouds project and it's dependencies with the Android compiler for the Dalvik virtual machine, because there are some warnings when dex-ing the jars that result in runtime errors due to usage of inner classes in the code. I'll be posting on the progress of this project also, once I get some more time to work on it.
This is it for the moment, I will come back with a detailed post about the features of Aegis Shield, once I'll manage to publish it in the Android Market.
Until then a nice weekend!

UPDATE: I've attempted to publish Aegis Shield in the Android Market but got thrown back by the agreements that you must make when publishing in which you guarantee that the use of cryptography API's are conforming with the US Government's export laws. Since I am no lawyer and I couldn't find any obvious information on what the violations may be, I decided not to publish in the Android Market anymore - at least until I find out for sure that the application conforms with the above mentioned requirements.

An Army of Droids

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:34:00 +0000

If you are wondering where the hell I've been and why I haven't written anything since March, thanks for your concern and please read on to elucidate the "mystery".
Since October last year, when Android 1.0 was released and the HTC G1 phone followed soon after, I have been following the evolution of our little green droid friend and also I have been working on my spare time together with some friends who share the same interest and passion for this subject on some applications in order to learn the ropes of Google's mobile platform. What I can say is that during this year I have accumulated lots of knowledge on Android and the only real regret I have is that the time which I got to spend working on our projects was rather limited. Anyway, no sense in being hanged on the past now, especially when the future holds lots of exciting things that are going to happen. We've seen 3 major Android updates since its release and this month came the 4th - Android 2.0. We've seen 2 more HTC phones with Android, one from Samsung one from Motorola and next month will bring some really anticipated entries into the scene such as the Motorola Droid, the Sony-Ericsson Rachel, the Acer Liquid, the Samsung Behold II and some more from HTC.
You may wonder what's this got to do with me not writing anything here for half an year. Well, as I mentioned, I was busy learning the platform and working on some applications. The first one, called Aegis Shield, is a simple password manager for your web or computer accounts which spawned from the idea of having all your sensitive account information in one secure place and at your finger tips at all times. This project is Open Source software and it is hosted on this Google code address. The application is currently available for download as an apk from the Google code site mentioned above and is at the stage of release candidate 2. It will be available as a full fledged free application in the Google Android Market once the first version is completed.
With this occasion, I would like to thank the guys that helped me with code committed on this application - Rares Barbantan and Christian Stefanescu. Also, I would like to thank Lucian Grozav (aka Pava) for his support in testing the application on his HTC Magic phone - brave guy :).
The second application started as an idea to participate in the ADC2 challenge but unfortunately we didn't get to finish a good working version by the time the entry time for ADC2 ended. However, that did not discouraged us and we are now close to having version 1.0 ready. The application will also be available in the Android Marked as a free application so keep following the blog for announcements of when it is going to be released. For this application I worked together with two friends of mine to whom I would like to thank for their contribution, support, ideas and most importantly for the code contributions - the two are Bogdan Popa and Alex Boga.
As you can see, I had a lot to do, and combined also with my family and job responsibilities this concurred to the fact that I did not have enough time to write blog posts. At least, now I have some good subjects to talk about, so keep posted - more on Android and on my projects will follow, especially since next month will be full of surprises and new Android related stuff.

o3 magazine relaunched

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:03:00 +0000

O3 magazine, the free online magazine for Open Source news, presentations and announcements, has relaunched recently in a new format and with a new site. If you are interested in Open Source news or if you previously used read the magazine, you can resume with following them on the new site with RSS, on their new Google Group, or on twitter.

My Android Resources

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:21:00 +0000

As I might have mentioned in one of my previous posts this year, I have recently started to learn how to develop applications for Google's Android platform. There are plenty of reasons why one might want to work with Android, but this doesn't represent the scope of my current post.
The scope of this post is for me to present the most important Android web resources that I follow in my learning and development process. There are also other sites that list Android resources out there, such as AndroidSavvy and Android Tapp, but I wanted to add here the list of things I found most useful and helpful, so that I can share my experience with anyone interested in the same subject.
Anyone can do a Google search and get a bunch of Android resources, but not everything you get is useful, or at least not useful for your context so, in most cases, it helps to learn form other people's experiences and use what's proven to be useful for them. The same is the case with my experience, because I also have started by following links from here to there and doing searches and following RSS feeds and in the end not many of the resources I first encountered proved to be valuable to me, but those that did I think are worth sharing, so here it goes...
For Android, mobile technologies news and application reviews I follow mainly 3 sites:

Android Guys - they have the latest rumors and news about Android developments and also have reviews of books or Android applications that might prove useful

AppVee - "the definitive source for Android app reviews" as they call themselves are a site which review applications found on the Android Market. After all it is good to keep in touch with what is being built and also get inspired from that.

MobileCrunch - this is a more general information site about mobile technology, but if you enter the Android game it is good to keep informed about other possible developments. Besides, there are the occasional Android articles here also.

Along with keeping up to date with news, rumors and developments in the Android world, what an Android developer needs is to find technical information and tutorials on the a fore mentioned subject. Unfortunately, aside of the official Android site where you can find all sorts of tutorials, examples and documentation, and where you should start your quest for learning, the technical blogs and resources for the Android platform seem a bit scarce to me, but perhaps I did not look enough. I will add here the list of sites I find useful when working on Android and I encourage anyone who works on the platform, to add their technical resources in the comments below.

Android Developers Google Group - with an average of 125 new posts a day, this is the most important resource you could harness if you need some quick information when you get stuck with a problem. The people in the group are very responsive and they can give you lots of advice. Also, there is a lot of information in the group archives, so it is most likely you will find an answer to your problem before you even need to ask.

Android Developers Blog - this is the official Andorid Developers blog and a hub for lots of tips and tutorials about the Android platform. It also contains links to other resources for developers, so be sure to give it a look.

Android JavaDoc - a place where you can find the javadocs we all come to treasure and love for the Android SDK releases.

Learning Android - a blog containing up to date Android tutorials.

This is it for now, but feel free to add your resources in the comments and also let me know if you found these resources useful.

You Reap What You Sow

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:24:00 +0000

The theme of this post is concerned with our effect on the environment. I know that lately there has been a lot of talk, controversy and contradiction on the subject of Global Warming and on the effects we as humans impose on our environment, of which many are not too friendly with nature, so I am not going to write here about opinions or philosophies or other useless talk.
I think that the effects of global warming are visible, and if you still are not convinced, go outside and take a look around, you'll be sure to notice some differences. What I intend in this post is to add a few resources that each one of us could use in making a small effort towards living a greener life.
I know that there are many of us wanting to do something, no matter how small, to contribute to the saving of our environment and we may be wondering what can we do about it. Well, here are a few links from one of the most renowned authority in the domain, National Geographic, that might give us a starting point.
Greendex is a green index calculator, that can compute how environment friendly your current way of life is, and give you a general idea of what can you do to improve - feel free to give it a try (my index was 56). Preserve our planed is National Geographic's section on environment preservation where you can find information on global warming and other ecosystem and environment related information. The Green Guide is National Geographic's site with tips about leading a greener life.
These should give anyone a nice starting point in finding some answers about how can we work with our environment and not against it. I believe that it is very important for us to take action now because even with our small contributions we can make sure that we will leave a good home for the next generations.

JobMate BETA is live

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:06:00 +0000

A friend of mine, Radu Tanasa, participated on behalf of his company Lightway Software, in the development of a new jobs portal for the local Romanian market, called jobmate, and he asked me to do a little presentation of the application on my blog in order to attract more people to the site.
First of all, please note that the site still is in beta stage, so you are encouraged to give it a try and send any feedback you may have through the site's contact functionality.
The portal is trying to bring more value to the people seeking new jobs by allowing them to create and maintain online CV's, access the site's forum with human resource information, read tutorials and job advice and also get free legal advice from a lawyer available for any questions they may have.
After the beta stage is over, the portal will also allow for companies to be able to view the CV's of job seekers so that they can choose from the available pool, the employees that may fit best their needs.
All in all, the site has a modern look, and offers enough functionality for its intended purpose, so if you are interested in being on the market for a job, or you are looking to hire, please give it a try and offer any feedback you have to it's creators, it might just be the next best thing in this domain.

Changes, changes and, guess what, more changes

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:24:00 +0000

Hi everybody and sorry for the long dry streak of articles on my blog. 2008 was a long and busy year for me for several reasons:
1. I got married last summer (pictures here) - so ladies the train has left the station :).
2. We went for a nice 2 week holiday/honeymoon in Croatia - see pictures here.
3. We finished the interior of our new apartment and we moved there.
4. We got also a new car - hooray now the banks own my ass for good :).
As you can see a lot went on in my life last year, and these were only the major things, not to mention other stuff like picking up a new hobby - photography and starting to learn Google's Android platform - see learning project here.
I am not going to make a promise out of writing more on the blog - that hasn't worked too well for me on other occasions, but as a resolution for this year, I intend to spend more time on my personal and professional development, which means that there will be a series of articles on my hobbies, including the biggest one I have, coding :). So stay tuned until next time, and we'll see what the new year brings as we go :).

artistsbay.org - invest in it

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:55:00 +0000

Hello everybody, It's been a while since I've posted something on my blog, but this time I have good reasons (I haven't been just lazy) and I am going to talk about them in the following posts.
In this post I just want to write a bit about the status of our side project artistsbay on which my good friend Radu Tanasa is working. It seems development is a bit slow for us since there is a lack of funds to sustain it, so if there is anyone interested in investing in this idea, we would appreciate it if you contact us for further information about the project. You can find our contact information in our blogger profiles.
We are looking forward to responses for this idea.

artistsbay.org first steps

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:46:00 +0000

As the great Chinese thinker and philosopher K'ung-fu-tzu (widely known as Confucius) once said that "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", we have made our first step in the journey of creating a place where artists and art lovers can meet, exchange ideas and simply enjoy art.
This place will be called Artistsbay and if you are interested in the end product, you are invited to enter your email on the artistsbay.org site and you will certainly be informed as soon as the first version will be made available online so you can be one of the first to give us feedback on the project and also benefit from the services it will offer. Also feel free to pass it on to your friends which are either artists or art lovers :).
The project is an idea that me and my friend Radu Tanasa have been thinking about for a while now and we have finally decided to turn it into reality. We have started by gathering information, thinking about what we should put in there and also letting people know that we intend to make this a landmark on the maps of all plastic artists and art lovers out on the web.
Beside the marketing application that is now live at artistsbay.org, we have also started the development for the project and we hope that we'll be able to soon put up a beta version that can be tested and further improved once it is live with a real user base.
If you would like to keep an eye out on how things will go with this project, you can stay tuned as I will add updates on my blog from time to time.

The Ultimate Programming Language

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:33:00 +0000

Last week I had an interesting discussion with one of my friends and colleagues about the the ongoing programming language hypes and He said he believed that about 80% of the programmers community is still waiting for "The Ultimate Programming Language", a language good for programming everything they may think of. I couldn't help but agree with his statement and it inspired me to write a new post about what I think this "Ultimate Programming Language" should be.

Since the beginning of the programming language history people have been searching for the perfect language and yet we have no language that is perfect, nor do I think we'll have one (at least not in the near future). However, I do believe we are pretty close to having some platforms that would fit in the majority of cases, the description of an "Ultimate Platform".

You will probably wonder on what am I basing my claims, so I am going to explain a bit what I mean. Lately there have been a lot of hypes around some new or (until recently) unknown programming languages that led to a lot of contradictory discussions between their communities which all claimed their language of choice was better than whatever other language they didn't like. Until some time ago, I also thought that Java was the best there is and I didn't want to hear of any other language. Fortunately my experience finally got to me bringing me the wisdom of realizing that there is no perfect programming language. As we humans are imperfect, having our own flaws, we cannot expect a single programming language to be perfect, especially if it is created by us :).

The best thing about all these hypes and contradictory discussions is that they have sparked some very good ideas in the sense of supporting more than one programming language on the well known platforms Java and .NET, including official support from the companies behind the platforms, so this means that more and more people realize that the real key to achieving the "Ultimate Programming Language" is in fact achieving an "Ultimate Platform", a platform that would allow everybody to do their job using the best language for a given task. The truth is that certain languages are good for certain things, so I believe that if we have a chance to combine them, we will be able to do our work in a more efficient and elegant manner.

There have also been other voices in the communities saying that the future of enterprise programming may require us to be polyglot programmers. I think that there is a fair chance that this will happen especially seeing the support Sun is putting into JRuby and Groovy and I am glad that in the end more and more people are realizing that using the right tool for the right job is the best way to get things done.

Lightway Software - new website

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:11:00 +0000

Lightway Software is the company that my good friend and ex work colleague Radu Tanasa started about a year ago. Since then he had to travel his own journey and it has not been an easy one, but he managed to stay on top of the situations he had to face and the year passed successfully.
This post is actually an announcement of the new version of the Lightway Software website and also a recommendation from me to anyone who might need help with a Java Enterprise or Web application to trustfully ask for Radu's help.
The values around which he founded his business are quality and customer orientation, so bringing value to the end customer is what matters to Lightway Software.
"It's all about choices."

A New Year's Resolution

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:02:00 +0000

Well, another year passed by, making me remember I am getting older and counting the things I have to get done around here before I will pass on :)...and many they are.
Last year was one full of changes and big decisions for me and also for the people around me, which is good, and even if sometimes it is tiring we need to learn how to embrace change before we can move on. It's, as some would say, one of life's most important lessons: we need to learn how to deal with change and adapt, otherwise we get left behind.
As I said, a lot has happened last year, we decided to get married (me and my girlfriend), we got a new apartment (and a nice mortgage to go with it) and I got a nice promotion at the end of the year. Also, we should not forget the people we got used having around and which passed on last year, God rest their souls, Florian Pitis, Luciano Pavarotti and Colin McRae, but this is also a natural part of life and the changes it involves.
I believe that the New Year will bring even more challenges for us in making our way through life. There will be many new things either planned, either waiting to be discovered for us this year, making our journey not a boring one.
My personal hope is that this year will bring a lot of happiness to everybody and that we will all try to be kinder to our kin than we've been before. Too much we have been slaves to money and power and I think the time has come for us to free ourselves from these chains and live our lives the way they were meant to be lived at the beginnings.

A Drop of Intelligence II - Making Things Simple

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:27:00 +0000

A while ago I wrote an article about how smart applications can improve our lives by taking care of menial and common tasks for us and allowing us to spend more time on the things we actually enjoy doing.

Since lately I have been doing some research of my own on how can we use the AI theories in making practical applications that can act as personal assistants for their users in helping them find information or in doing common repetitive tasks for them, I would like to begin a series of articles in which I am going to share my conclusions and my problems as I progress along with my research.

Today I am going to expose my perspective on why I believe that Artificial Intelligence practices have a small adoption percentage in commercial applications, so without any further due, here's my take on it.

The industry that makes the most use of Artificial Intelligence theories in its applications is the gaming industry. Games have come a long way in AI evolution and some of them use complex techniques like neural networks for machine learning, planning and and adaptive behaviors for their actors (NPCs) to provide great entertainment for the gamers, but even games still have a long way to go in this domain until the experience provided will be more realistic.

So how can the AI techniques evolve taking into consideration the current technological developments and the research invested in this field of Computer Science? I believe that if the AI research would be better promoted to and understood by the developers working on commercial applications today, the field would have a lot to gain in new advancements since if these techniques will start to be adopted in commercial applications and the practical experience will be very valuable to perfecting them. What the AI field really needs is some promotion and some good non-academic books that can be easily assimilated by the masses, and then the experience and the practice of its wide adoption would help in its advancement and growth.

In the following articles I will try to share my experiences and my problems in learning the AI techniques form my perspective. Bear in mind that I also am in the process of learning and understanding the intricacies of this field and any help, experience or ideas that you have or would like to discuss are welcomed, so keep close :).

P.S. I really had a lack of inspiration for the article title, so if you have a better suggestion, do share :).

No iPods on Linux? Why?

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:08:00 +0000

There's been a rumor going around that Apple implemented some kind of protection for their new iPods so they could not be used with other synchronizing software. What does this mean? It means Linux users owning an iPod won't be able to synchronize their music since there's no iTunes for Linux and the software available on Linux for this won't work anymore (unless hacked).

What puzzles me is why on hell would Apple go on and do that? Don't they want people using Linux to buy their iPods? Doesn't that bring more profit for them?

This piece of news started some passionate arguments and complaints...I am not going to complain about their decision, after all, the requirements of an iPod are on the box and you always have the choice not to buy it. Still, as a company, wouldn't you be interested to make the requirements list as low as possible? Wouldn't making your product available to more people be more profitable for you?

Some opinions state that it might not be Apple's fault and they may be constraint by the record companies in order to have more control of what's played on the iPod. Even so, I don't think that is a good excuse, why don't they release a Linux version of iTunes? Isn't the money of Linux users just as good as other customer's money?

You might say that in order to support iTunes on Linux, they will need more developers, more developers cost money and in the end the effort might not be worth it or it may rise the prices on iPods. I say that with today's technology there is no excuse for such a thing. I am sure that if they thought about it, they would find a way. Ever heard of portable software? Why not implement iTunes in Java or in Python, after all they are portable and almost ubiquitous...

As I think about this issue more and more, I really cannot find a good explanation as to why Apple would act like this. The only reason coming in my mind would be that they want to keep the ecosystem built around their iPods intact, so if you want and iPod you should buy a Mac also. Well, not everybody wants to buy a Mac or windows in order to own an iPod, this requirement is absurd. I just want to be trendy and own an iPod and not have to spend more than it's price to be able to use it.

It's not that I want to condemn them and the way they run their business, after all they have the right to choose their customers, but if I were running things at Apple, every customer would be important to me, after all more customers = more profit, it's basic business thinking.

A Linux Drivers Rant

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:19:00 +0000

I have been using both Ubuntu and Windows for about 2 years now and it's been a combination that has worked for me just fine, but now I am thinking of completely switching to Ubuntu.

Now don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is a very nice Linux distribution, it installs quickly without too much fuss and is very user friendly but it still isn't perfect. The things that bother me the most are the lack of support from most hardware vendors and, for the 64 bit version, the missing flash player and Java web start plugins. However, today I am going to rant a bit about the lack of Linux support from most hardware vendors, including even some big names in the hardware industry that do not support all their products on Linux.

As our friend Lord Vader would say: "I find their lack of hardware support on Linux disturbing", and then would breath heavily :). Indeed it is a bit disturbing to see that great hardware producers like Creative and HP have very little support for their soundboards and multi functional printers, respectively. I believe that lately Linux has been a glowing point on the OS map and it's popularity among the desktop users is ever increasing so I don't see many reasons why the hardware vendors shouldn't support Linux for their products. Sure they can invoke reasons that it is costly to develop drivers for Linux, and that is true, but probably if they would study the feasibility of investing in Linux support they would reach a conclusion that the market is now in a point where it is worth doing it.

While Ubuntu and other Linux distributions do their best to support a large variety of hardware it is impossible for them to cover everything and for all their drivers to work seamlessly, so I would prefer the support of the hardware vendors for their products.

Fortunately not everyone is blind or indifferent of what's going on on the Linux desktop market and there are some big vendors who already started supporting this operating system. Kudos to nVidia for their great support on the GeForce video adapter series and to DELL for beginning to deliver PC and Laptops with Linux distributions. Also kudos to Ubuntu for making possible the use of the restricted drivers that are available.

I do hope that everyone else will fill the vibrations resonating within the Linux Force and start delivering Linux drivers for their hardware. Meanwhile I will orient myself to those who already support it before buying anything and I would advise everyone who wants to use Linux as a desktop OS to do the same.

Until next time, take care and May the Linux Force be with you!

Looks like someone's been reading my entries

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 17:31:00 +0000

This June I wrote an article titled "First Things I Would do as Microsoft's CEO" in which I said that I would pretty much Open Source all of Microsoft's products as soon as I would get accommodated :). Why am I bringing this up now? Because yesterday while I was quietly looking on dzone's new links I found a link to an article with the title "Why Microsoft is Going Open Source" on the Linux Journal site, so I followed the link curious to see what was all the fuss about.

The subject of the article is about Microsoft's new site on Open Source supported by Bill Hilf and his OSLab and about the submissions of some of Microsoft's Shared Source licenses to the OSI for approval as official Open Source licenses. The article also wonders about Microsoft's real reasons for doing this and I must say that even though their initiative is commendable, I am quite skeptical about their reasons also.

As Linus Torvalds so elegantly explains it in his interview published at linux.com, Open Source is not motivated by altruist reasons, but by the constant struggle of an individual to improve his/her own standing. In doing so, and contributing their work back to the community, they manage the bring the whole community a step forward, so even though its motivation comes form selfishness, in the end it manages to help everybody else too, and that is the beauty of the whole concept.

This being said, I intend to keep an eye out to see how Microsoft's initiative will play out and if their actions will indeed be made to also help the community or they will just be a completely selfish act. I hope it all plays out for the best.

The Best Things in Life are Open Source

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 19:41:00 +0000

It seems that after all this time since Open Source (OS) is around, there still are people with misconceptions about this model for software development. In this post, I want to try to explain what are the reasons I like the OS and mainly what is its strength.

Open Source's greatest power doesn't come form the fact that the software developed under this model comes free of charge, as some people might think. Although saving some money by using free software, might seem like a good idea, the real reason why I believe this model was invented is because it gives it's users the power of choice. By being open and allowing it's users to see the source code, open source opens a gate towards a plethora of opportunities that wouldn't otherwise be possible, if you would use commercial closed source software.

By using OS software, it doesn't mean that you don't have to pay anything, as a matter of fact the great advantage is that you can buy support not just from the software creators, but from third parties that also know the software very well. Because of this and because usually there is more than one choice when it comes to an Open Source application with a certain functionality, the support you get is usually of high quality compared to that of a commercial application. The competition in the OS world is good because it also spurs innovation, innovation which is necessary for the various Open Source service vendors in order to keep their business on top and keep their clients.

By adopting Open Source as a development model, as a company, you can sell support, training, customization and other related services around your application, building a healthy business model. Another great advantage is that you can create communities around your applications that will help you in developing and improving them.

While single vendor integrated solutions do have their advantages, I would still go to an Open Source/Free Software solution over an integrated commercial one anytime and that is because I love my freedom of choice and I love to be able to control how I build my applications over being told how to do it and depend on a vendor to support my needs. In the end it all is a matter of choice, so what path would you take?

It's about the people

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:38:00 +0000

Lately I have been reading some blog posts about how people are a big influence in the success rate of a software project and I thought I should throw my 2 cents on the matter.

Damn right that people are a big influence on software projects, as a matter of fact they are the most important variable that should be considered when putting together a team for a project and it seems that many times this is not well enough thought of.

So, how do you get the right people for the right job in software development? I am no recruiter, nor do I have experience in interviewing and hiring people, but I do have an interest in working with a certain kind of people in order to do my job right and in order to reach the goals of a project. That is why I am just going to describe the kind of people I like to work with, by listing a set of qualities they should meet.

Most important quality a software developer should have is passion about his/her work. I think it's needles to say that if you don't like what you do, then you should seek to build a career in something else that might better suit you and in which you can work with passion and pleasure.

Another must for a software developer is enthusiasm and the will to learn and improve. In a domain like this if you have no desire to learn new things all the time and you feel contempt with your current level, you're a dead man.

Intelligence is also a very important quality for a software developer. Without it there's no place for innovation and creativity. Without innovation and creativity, there's only mediocrity.

Besides the qualities the developers should have, there are also some negative traits I wouldn't appreciate at all in a team mate. First of them is vanity or excessive pride. Nobody likes a jackass that brags about himself all day long and considers everybody else below him and there's nothing worse than having such people in a team, regardless how good they are.

Another breed of people I don't like having near are the ass kissers. These people will go to any length to please their bosses in order to be promoted or to get a raise that they can even jeopardize a team's unity by taking care of their interests before the interests of the team. Also, if you are in a lead position and you are surrounded by this kind of people, you will have a distorted vision of the reality because their interest would be to please you and they will tell you what you like to hear instead of the truth.

As a conclusion, the kind of people I like to work with should be smart, passionate, enthusiastic, without fake modesty and honest. My mother used to tell me "surround yourself with friends that can teach you good things". I think that is the best kind of advice a parent could give and I seek to follow it as much as possible. Now that we have a simple profile of a developer, another problem is to attract them and keep them together, but that is a good subject for another post...

First Things I Would do as Microsoft's CEO

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 19:26:00 +0000

If you haven't figured this out from the title yet, this one is going to be a rant about Microsoft again :). I know the internet's full of them and it's quite an worn out subject to rant about them but I decided to do this one more time, then I am not going to even bother about them anymore...at least until they do something incredibly stupid or outrageous, so I can pick on them again :)).

So, without any further due, let's delve directly into the subject of this article, namely what I would do if by any chance I would become Microsoft's CEO, even for a day.

I would immediately open source all Windows versions, providing a nice subscription system on which all types of users could enter if they wish and which would guarantee them technical support for their Windows system according to their type of subscription (e.g. home edition subscription would be cheaper and would address the common users, enterprise edition subscription would be expensive and would address the enterprises). This move would certainly close the mouths of many free software advocates, including myself. Now we would have the choice to change Windows if we don't like it or shut up and pay for support :).
.NET would also be completely open, well maybe except Visual Studio, which will have a commercial version.
I would change the policy on supporting the Mono project and I would invest some time and money to develop it and make sure it integrates and is compatible with the .NET platform. This would make my development environment ubiquitous.
I would renounce on using DRM on the media distributed on the Zune and I would open Microsoft's multimedia codecs to make them easily accessible to whoever wants to use them, even on Linux.
I would try to make all my software portable so it can be used on all major operating systems.

In short, I would try to have an open perspective on things, it would probably suit me better to collaborate with the industry and help those that need my help, thus better consolidating my position on the market by being present everywhere and seizing more opportunities.

What do you think? Could such attitude work for them or is it a recipe for disaster? I would be very curious on your opinions.

A Drop of Intelligence

noreply@blogger.com (Mihai Campean) — Wed, 16 May 2007 17:19:00 +0000

Google has became the most used search engine on the web and has made its owners proud and filthy rich and all this with good reasons. Lately I have been checking out a new feature of Google: if you have an account with them, you can sign in and then do your searches and the search history is kept. Now I haven't got that far using it and I don't know the exact reasons for which they implemented it but it reminded me about my earlier studies of search engines, web crawlers and agents where I found an interesting concept: doing customized searches. Now just imagine that you are a botanist, you log on to Google, do a search query for, let's say "cell", and the results you receive are just what you expected, no more useless links to irrelevant information like prison cells or sheet cells or even human or animal cells...just info about good ol' vegetable cells. That would be nice, wouldn't it? I think it would be great to be able to do that and I also believe it is doable. Just by asking for more details about the user doing the search, his/her background, profession, interests, hobbies and other personal info and then ranking the results against this information, more relevant results can be produced.
This is just a simple example using simple facts and reasoning, the applications you write don't even have to be that smart, you just need to classify information thoroughly. Also with the developments for the new semantic web that are currently happening at W3C, we will begin to see a web that will be more and more close to our human reasoning than the experiences we have today. I just hope that the semantic web will catch on, if not I am sure there will be plenty of ideas and developments to make our computer experiences more "humane".
What I have told you until now is practically just scratching the surface. Just imagine the plethora of intelligent applications and agents that could at least take care of menial tasks like paying the bills for you on time so you never will be late on payments again, investing in the stock market for you, betting sports for you or participating in the lottery for you every week. We should be able to use technology to make our life easier, take care of our menial tasks so we have more free time to enjoy ourselves and I believe that the near future will make this a reality.