What I love about Thunderbird 3

At the time of writing, I have been using Thunderbird 3 Beta 4. It does have some bugs, but overall it has very good and important features.

1. Thunderbird has now officially replaced Opera as my RSS reader. Its easy to import existing RSS feeds using Add Account -> Blogs and News Feeds --> Finish. Account Settings -> Blogs and News Feeds --> Manage Subscriptions --> Import XML or OPML

2. While browsing a website using Firefox, you can simply ask Firefox to open the RSS in Thunderbird instead of its Live Bookmarks or Google Reader.

3. I use Thunderbird's Favorite folders option more than the Smart Folders. In this way, I get to see only the folders (Inbox@gmail1, Inbox@gmail2) that I want, across multiple gmail accounts.

4. Over a period of time, while reading RSS one tends to have several 'ToDo' tags. It is easy to create a 'Search' folder called ToDo that will show all ToDo RSS's in one place.
Right Click RSS account --> Search -> (Add rule that says 'Tags | contains | To Do' -> Search. Then Save as Search Folder. Enter the required folder and other details and you are done. I then add this search folder to my Favorite list. Note, I always use the Favorite Folders view.

5. While reading an email or RSS news item, pressing space bar takes you to the next unread item in the next folder/account. Pretty handy when your mind is in reading mode.

6. I get to share the same Thunderbird profile across my Ubuntu and Windows. No duplicate mailboxes, no waste of disk space. All settings are shared! This has to be THE best thing about mozilla (works for Firefox too)

- Message Filter function is still buggy as of Thunderbird 3 b4, but I don't use it anyways

Tip: To see and manage your existing Feed subscribtions, simply right click on any existing RSS feed in your Thunderbird and Subscribe. This will save some time. Conventionally, you would use Account Settings --> RSS account --> Manage Subscriptions.

Copy Orkut Birthdays to Google calendar and Outlook

Till date, Google has not added support to export Orkut Birthday calendar to the personal calendar (Google Calendar) and hence there is no easy way to have the same in Outlook.

Here is a manual way of copying Orkut Birthdays to Google Calendar and Outlook.
(Note, this method allows you to copy only one birthday event at a time to your google calendar)

1. (Skip this step if you already see Orkut Birthday calendar in your Google Calendar) Login to Orkut and add your orkut friend's birthdays to Google Calendar. How to?
2. In Google Calendar, click on the birthday event you wish to copy.
3. If you get a popup, select 'copy to calendar' option. If not, and you get the event details, under 'More Actions', choose the option 'Copy to yourname/emailid'. This will open the event details for editing.
4. Change the 'Repeats' option to yearly if preferred. Edit Reminder options as required.
5. Click Save. The entry will be added to your Google calendar.
6. Now sync Google calendar with Outlook, see how to.

How I upgraded the firmware on my Nokia E51 (against Nokia's wishes)

I bought a Nokia E51 in India with firmware version v200.34.36. For reasons best known only to Nokia; firmware updates are very slow to reach this part of the world. If I use Nokia software updater, it would politely tell me that my current firmware is already the latest available. However, The latest version of firmware for other regions is v400.34.011, hence I decided to give it a try.

Step 1: Backup phone and Memory card data. I backed up using two methods.
1a. (PC Suite mode) Backed up the complete phone using Nokia PC Suite backup feature. (Handy if something goes wrong while updating firmware and I want to revert back all settings and changes)
2a. (Removable drive mode) Manually copied the contents of Phone memory and Memory card to a folder on my Laptop. (Handy if I wish to restore some apps or documents manually. After all you really don't want to copy all the old settings again!)

Step 2: I downloaded the Nemesis Service Suite (NSS) Beta 1.0.38.15 from here.
I downloaded the Nokia Software Updater 1.8.10 from here.
I already had the latest version of PC Suite 7.1.30.9

Step 3: Now this is what worked for me. Disconnected Phone from PC Suite.
Uninstalled Nokia PC Suite (and Software Updater, since I already had it)
Restarted the PC.

Step 4: Install NSS using Virtual USB as the option.
Install Nokia PC Suite
Install Nokia Software Updater

Step 5: Exited out of Nokia PC Suite at this point (right clicked on tray icon and Exit).
Start NSS. Connected the phone to laptop in PC Suite mode (important to select PC suite mode on phone. Did not start PC suite at this point)

Step 6: In NSS, click on the Scan option present on top right corner of screen. Once successful, clicked on the Phone Info icon . Then under 'Production Data Edit', clicked the Read button and NSS was able to read my phone contents.

Step 7: I used this APAC product code 0552352. Clicked Enable corresponding to Product Code and entered this code. Then clicked Write. Status at the bottom left confirmed that it was successful. (no other message pops up!)
Closed NSS and started PC Suite.

Step 8: Clicked Software Updater and proceeded with firmware upgrade. This time the updater showed that a new firmware version is available. The further steps went smoothly. Followed on screen instructions.

Step 9: Restored messages, contacts, calendar, notes and user files using my backup copy. Did not restore 'Settings' since I think its unwise to restore settings.

Now, I have the shiny new firmware and with nice updates!

Nautilus - Expand/Collapse directory tree with keyboard

I use Ubuntu 9.04 and generally prefer to use the keyboard while navigating through directories in Nautilus.

Discovered a nice feature today.
Quite handy if you don't want to move away from the current view and just see the contents of current directory.

To open/expand a directory tree, use <Shift> + <Right key>
To close/collapse a directory tree, use <Shift> + <Left key>

This trick also works in the Tree pane/Side bar (F9)

Fixing Eclipse J2ME emulator in Ubuntu after Java upgrade

Java upgrade in Ubuntu tend to cause minor headaches sometimes.
Like today; the package manager upgraded Java on my machine, and suddenly my J2ME project(midlet) won't launch.
My Sun Wireless Toolkit (launched from eclipse) which was pointing to the previous version which no longer exists on the system.

Here is a simple fix.
Traverse to the {WTK installation path}/bin directory
Open the emulator.sh (on Ubuntu) in Text editor. Here I found the hardcoded JRE path
javapathtowtk=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.16/bin/

I updated the above variable and then my J2ME project in eclipse started working.

Setting up the tools for J2ME app development

Aim: To setup tools and environment for J2ME application development
My OS: Ubuntu jaunty

JRE
1. Download and install JRE (Java Runtime Environment) using the Synaptic Package Manager. The JRE is required for Eclipse to run.

Eclipse
2. Download and install Eclipse. I use this Eclipse Ganymede package.
Make sure you are able to launch Eclipse after it has been downloaded and extracted.
If Eclipse won't start with messages like 'Widget disposed too early', try adding this line to eclipse.ini
-Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.XULRunnerPath=/usr/lib/xulrunner
this worked for me! BTW, eclipse log is located at /.metadata/.log
.metadata is a hidden folder!

Sun WTK
3. Download and install the Wireless Tool Kit. Although, Sun now has a Java ME SDK 3.0, it is currently available only for Windows. I use the earlier Sun Java Wireless Toolkit 2.5.2. Extract the contents to a suitable directory.

EclipseME plugin
4. Next we proceed to download the plugin to help us develop the J2ME midlets. Although the EclipseME project has graduated and is now called Eclipse Mobile Tools for Java (MTJ), I did face some problems with it on my Ubuntu machine. Problems were especially related to Proguard not being able to find my inner classes and throwing NoClassDefFound errors during Obfuscation. Hence I decided to switch back to the tried and tested EclipseME 1.7.9 plugin.
To install, use Eclipse's Software Updates feature and add the site http://www.eclipseme.org/updates


Proceed with the installation. Restart Eclipse if asked to. After successful installation, you should be able to see a new 'J2ME' option under Eclipse -> Window -> Preferences

Proguard
5. This is a must if you wish to optimize the resulting jar and also make sure nobody copies your code (Obfuscate). I downloaded the latest Proguard4.4.tar.gz version. Extract it to a suitable directory.

Antenna Eclipse Plugin
6. Add the plugin update site http://antenna.sf.net/update via Eclipse's Software Updates feature and install it.


Proceed to install the plugin. Restart Eclipse if asked to.
Installation guide is here.

You can also download the Antenna Jar
This is required if you wish to build using Ant (build.xml) How to set it up and use it will be covered in another post.

Wiring it all!

Browse to Eclipse -> Window -> Preferences -> J2ME (Left side option)
Set the Antenna JAR and WTK Root properties
Antenna JAR (antenna.preprocessor.v2_1.7.7.jar) will be located under Eclipse/plugins directory
WTK Root is where you extracted the contents in Step 3 above.


Import the Sun WTK Emulation devices in Eclipse
Open Eclipse -> Window -> Preferences -> J2ME (Left side option) -> Device Management
Click Import
In the Import Devices dialog that pops up, browse for the WTK/bin directory.
Click Refresh. You should see this.

Click Finish

On Preferences screen, Click J2ME -> Packaging -> Obfuscation and set the Proguard Root Directory.
Set it to the path where you extracted Proguard contents in step 5 above. Mine is /media/sda5/Dev/proguard4.4

All Done!

Now import an existing project or create a dummy project.
Right click on the project and enable 'Antenna Preprocessor'.
Now if you see the Project Properties (Alt-Enter), you should see a new option 'Antenna preprocessor' under it.



JMUnit
If you wish to write Test cases, you should consider adding JMUnit jar to your project classpath.

A nice guide on using JMUnit is here

You are all set to start J2ME programming.
Next, I ll post on how to actually start using these tools and make the most out of it.

J2ME programming tools

In my experience, these are the tools required for developing mobile applications (midlets).

Eclipse IDE. The latest is Eclipse Galileo. I use Eclipse Ganymede.
Mobile Java Tools plugin for Eclipse.
Sun Java Wireless Toolkit The latest is Java ME SDK 3.0, but I use WTK 2.5.2 separately
Antenna Preprocessor

In another post, I ll be talking about how to use these tools to develop and application.

Update - MJT experience :(
Recent experience with Mobile Java Tools was not good. I faced problems with unnecessary NoClassDefFound errors on inner classes, probably something to do with the preverifier and obfuscator (proguard). So I decided to switch back to the tried and tested EclipseME 1.7.9 Plugin

Update - More tools:
Proguard (latest is v4.4) - Obfuscator, preverifier etc to safeguard and optimize the code
JMUnit - for unit testing (my research tells me that JMUnit is better than j2meunit, also at sourceforge)