2007 Google Summer of Code T-Shirt & Cirtificate Arrived

We received 2007 Google summer of code T-Shirt. And again a big thanks to Google. The T-shirt was bit criticized by students this time, due to the white flowers on the black T-Shirt. I don't find this T-shirt particularly unappealing, but I found it too tight. What a shame I did not click on the size option on Google's web app correctly. At the end of GSoC I'm an unhappy dude without the cool T-shirt worn by all other GSoC participants and mentors.

Good Bye Sony T100, I'm switching to Canon 400D DSLR

Few months ago I bought my first digital point and shoot camera,a Sony T100. Sony T series has a good reputation for it's ultra slim body. Apart from being slim T100 was an awesome camera with 5x optical zooming and 8.1MPs. It usually gave very sharp pictures and it was pretty easy to operate even in the so called Program Auto Mode. How ever I soon found photography very interesting and felt the limitations of point and shoot cameras. I was worrying about its small image sensor which did not give any depth of field. And I worried about the speed of the camera also. So finally I decided to sell my T100 and switch to a Canon 400D DSLR which is an entry level DSLR.

Canon and Nikon are the best DSLR makers. I prefer Canon due to low price compared to Nikon D80. And it has new anti dust technology. I'll update when I receive the Canon 400D. By the way you can see the photos which I have taken from my Sony T100.

Google Summer of Code is over.

I was able to complete Google Summer of Code successfully with my mentoring organization Lanka Software Foundation. The code of Bassa changed a lot during last summer. And you can get it now from our Sourceforge SVN (svn co https://bassa.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/bassa bassa). After all it has been the best summer for me. Also during last summer I created the official product blog for Bassa, which can be found at http://bassa-blog.blogspot.com. And finally I have to say "THANK YOU GOOGLE for organizing this event".

Nokia N800

Nokia N800 is a great gadget. Unlike other products from Nokia this is an Internet tablet. You will not find a phone integrated with this device. And it is quite noteworthy that this device is powered by Linux. Obviously this is an upgrade for the Nokia N770 which could be considered as the predecessor of N800. I was first informed about the device by Bud, then I decided to order one of these beasts with the initial payment of Google Summer of Code program.

What attracts me to this device is its UPnP support, High-resolution touch screen (800 x 480 pixels) with up to 65,536 colors, Wi-Fi, Web cam. You can get more details by referring to the spec. How ever Nokia claims that this device is powered by Internet tablet OS 2007, even though this is Desktop Linux. So don't get fooled by such claims. The other interesting thing is that you can write your own applications using maemo framework. If you are not interested in developing your own application like me, then there are lot of ready to install apps at garage.maemo.org. And Ruby fanatics now you can even install Ruby on Rails.

The only drawback I found in this device is lack of phone. Apart from that rest of the features really satisfies me.