More about Magarmuchh

Finally I’m able take FlickrUp somewhere near where I imagined it first while starting QML UI. Version 4.0.0 is now published on Nokia store both for Symbian as well as MeeGo devices. It has a number of improvements & new features and I’ve made it paid as well Though, there is a free verison available as well.

FlickrUp now features much better navigation through different views and OAuth protocol based networking. QtFlickr had some limitations or maybe I wasn’t aware of the way to exploit certain Flickr APIs through it, hence shifted to OAuth, JSON based networking and parsing which not only helped adding certain new features to the app but also gave more consistent working.

What’s new!

– Now FlickrUp features user activities as well. It shows activities on user photos, commented photos and also contact activities.

– There is a home button on most screens which helps in faster navigation while opening user profiles, photo, photo details, etc.

– Earlier app allowed to view other user’s profile at one level only. Like I can view profiles of my contacts but to view profile of a contact of my contact I either had to add his one photo as my favorite or in one of my gallery. Now I can move of upto any number of profiles (dunno how will device behave with large number of pages ). Moreover, now just on clicking user avatar will open the profile of that particular user.

– Authorization is now from app itself and it addresses the problem of missing & non-working FB, Gmail login option. For more details see demo video!

– There are many more changes relating to UI, consistency, upload, app settings that allows choosing your favorite font, etc, etc

You can read more about this latest version at

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/flow/item/16434_FlickrUp_updated_and_improved.php

http://symbian-developers.net/flickrup-4/

Download

- Free version: http://store.ovi.com/content/212824

- Paid version: http://store.ovi.com/content/333915

Demo

Some screenshots

Only a hour back I opened my laptop to pass some time of this boring life and the first thing I checked on twitter was Iron Man 3 trailer and it was awesome! I, kind of, don’t have words for it! That’s something usual for me after watching these sci-fi, action movies trailers. Only bad thing is that it is not coming soon . Dunno how they always make our superhero look absolute looser in these trailers but I love that style.  Christopher Nolan kind of style where everything goes extremely dark & depressing in 1st and 2nd half just blows away your mind!

Can’t understand why I’m writing about Iron Man when this post is titled Nokia Lumia 510. Just because former is scarily awesome and latter is bluntly crap! Ohk, so Lumia 510 was the second news I checked and like it happens these days with Nokia I had that Akshay Kumar kind of grin on my face. Reason was simple, I fail to understand how can a company that was market leader till few years back can be so mindless in pricing and even launching its devices. Seriously ~ INR 11k for Lumia 510 with these specifications(Specs at Nokia site). And I wasn’t even able to find processor details on Nokia page. Simple,  they might be using one of their pathetic 800MHz processor.

Even if I’m half conscious, I’ll never be buying this one. Additionally,when we have 10x better mobile phones from Karbonn, Micromax and many more! (I’m not citing Samsung, LG & other global companies just because they don’t fit into this post as I’m focusing only on India). But hum Indians toh Indians rahe  and some of us will surely buy this good for nothing product just because we don’t want to spend our hard-earned money on newer Indian companies and also we have that long established trust and bond with Nokia. Dunno what that trust is all about because last time when my sister dropped one of my Nokia(Lumia 800) from 3ft -3.5ft height its screen got shattered and now it is waiting in my cupboard for INR 11k to get it fixed. And last time when I went to Nokia Care to get my Nokia C7 fixed on which we spilled some water, they never fixed it even after keeping it with themselves for a month. So, even C7 is waiting as well for that one day to come when Nokia Care guy will call me that replacement for its  broken part  has arrived with them and we can get it fixed. Just for clarification, I never bought these two devices

With all this I can’t understand why in our country we cannot spend on indigenous companies when companies like Nokia are making fool of us with their over-priced products, for over a couple of years now. Just in  case, you wonder why I’m calling Lumia 510 outdated & over-priced read Windows Phone versions on Wikipedia or maybe better compare Lumia 510′s specs with same ranged products from other companies or just search Windows Phone on Google and you can find many really great(read pathetic) things about it!

Few days back I was reading this article in Yojana(civil services stuff) which says India now has 900mn mobile users but sadly very few of them are using Indian products (although 12% of global handsets are manufactured in India still very less compared to China’s ~50%). It is obvious that many of our Indian phones & tablets are not comparable with products from companies like Samsung, Nokia, LG, Apple, etc. but what about Lumia 510 and Karbonn A21. I’m not saying that we should blindly buy devices from Indian companies but can’t we give them a chance if we can…Haldiram’s, Cafe Coffee Day might not have been same when they started!

Know more about Bumblr

After leaving my job last year I was so-called preparing for Civil Services at home, I knew that I was fooling people and in turn myself but I was loving that. I had all that I needed at my home sweet home and was trying to delay the inevitable. But it happened last month, I joined two big coaching centres here and came to this already over-crowded place which is full of people, mostly from UP & Bihar as usual , trying to outsmart one another. Last one month has been an adaptation process for me and it was difficult to adjust without things which were easily available to me till last month. But alongwith these difficulties it has been a great learning experience also. The excitement of doing classes is back and I’m learning some amazing things which I was missing earlier.

It is really easy to get lost in the crowd here and sometimes you feel invisible with another 400 people congestedly sitting around you in a not so big classroom. It takes some getting use to see everyone religiously studying/reading their notebooks. This is why I tried to avoid coming here, I hated this environment but now it is getting normal with each day . Here it is difficult to find a guy or gal (aged between 20 to 30) without those spiral notebooks or a bag or a bunch of books or some handouts or newspaper, in short some study material and sometimes it scares a shit out of me but at last I’m also the part of the same gang . The moment you aboard your auto you took from metro station, you start realizing that its not going to be easy. Thanks to the hype and status associated for being an IAS sometimes it really painful to watch many people preparing here. For many people here it is the only thing in the life or maybe it is the life. And I don’t understand why…maybe because I’m not at that stage yet

Another thing, people here talk too much about problems in our Indian system and I don’t understand when the same guys are getting in the system why it is not changing! Maybe because system changes them or maybe because everyone is talking that rubbish and isn’t implementing it. Whatever, I’m not the judge! And they have their Fundamental Rights too

Whatever be the condition, awfully hot and humid, over-crowded or scary, this is the place where I have spend my coming few months and that too without gym, without much of programming, without my dear bed, without home-cooked food and most importantly without home. As Benjamin said or Robert Herrick or whoever No Pain No Gain. Lets see if I can do what everybody here is tryitong for

Time to study now!

Because of this user can’t download a better res image. I don’t know the reason for this problem and neither I’ve the solution for it right now but there is a way around for this that is just rotate the device once and the result should be something like this,

Hope this helps

FlickrUp S40 is an attempt to bring some of the functionalities of  Qt app FlickrUp for S40 platform.

It is a very basic app and my first attempt towards making Nokia S40 apps

Many users had requested download feature ever since I’ve published the app. With this update, app allows user download photos which can be downloaded by the user depending on the owner’s privacy settings. From start, I knew that it is not something difficult to implement, the only problem was showing download details to user . I’ve tried to do my best to show download progress and allow downloads queue and continue in background. With this I hope many users now will be able to download the photos the like and use them as their wallpapers.

Since version 2.0.0, I also wanted to implement pinch-zoom feature in the application but with QtQuick 1.0 it was difficult to implement for someone like me. I never wanted slider mechanism for zooming therefore I chose to not use it with earlier updates. I tried somethings with GestureArea element from lab but it was bit tricky. Now I switched to QtQuick 1.1 and used PinchArea element with MouseArea to get the desired experience. My imperfect code for pinch-zoom can be found here.

I’ve also tried to play with QtMobility to show and set location data for a photo. Although, it is not perfect but still it came out better than I expected and  I’ll look forward to improve it in future!

I hope with these additions FlickrUp will be a better mobile app although it still has some way to go such as performance, notifications, etc. but I can honestly say that this update has bee my best programming effort to date

Some issues with this update:

• There is some update problem when using latest store client from Nokia beta labs. Store client fails to update app on the device and older version is installed again.
  Try doing a clean install to prevent this if using client from beta labs.
• Hidden content in some views(photo details, comments etc.). Sometimes some content is not fully shown and is only visible when flicking at the end.
  Try switching orientation, it will get normal.

Below are some screen shots for new version

Download from Nokia store at Shoppper