Office: OpenOffice.org 1.1 released

OpenOffice.org announced first major update to OpenOffice. 1.1 is now final and English version is available for download on Windows, Solaris and Linux. I have been using 1.0.x versions and 1.1 RC's for a while. With every update OpenOffice is getting better and better and better compatability with M$ Office. OpenOffice is now the only office suite on my home machine.
The two new major features for me in 1.1 update are export to PDF format from OpenOffice.org Writer and export to Macromedia Flash format (.swf) from OpenOffice.org Impress. Support for export to PDF got better with every update.
Checkout my blog archive for the month 2003_09 exported to PDF from Writer:Kumar Mettu's Blog.pdf. The only data lost from saved html file is Hyperlinks.
Here is a simple presentation exported to Macromedia Flash format (.swf):


Check out OpenOffice.org XML Essentials book online.

J2ME: Get Weather Forecasts Free

Weather on Demand is one of the most common applications of SMS. Few of weather service examples are:

1. Weather alerts from Verizon .
2. Weather Network and TELUS Mobility's On Demand Weather service and
3. Weather.com's Radar on Mobile Phones.
With a simple MIDlet you can get Weather forcasts free on your phone. US government provides free weather forecasts here. Note that the weather forecasts are not as high quality as commercial services. The simple MIDlet here displays weather at SF(modify the URL to point to your city):

001 import java.io.IOException; 002 import java.io.InputStream; 003  004 import javax.microedition.io.Connector; 005 import javax.microedition.io.StreamConnection; 006 import javax.microedition.lcdui.Command; 007 import javax.microedition.lcdui.CommandListener; 008 import javax.microedition.lcdui.Display; 009 import javax.microedition.lcdui.Displayable; 010 import javax.microedition.lcdui.Form; 011 import javax.microedition.midlet.MIDlet; 012  013  014 /** 015  * MIDlet to display weather forecast for SF. 016  * 017  * @author Kumar Mettu 018  * @version 1.0 019  * 020  */ 021 public class Weather extends MIDlet implements CommandListener { 022  023     private Display display; 024     //Exit command. 025     private Command  exitCommand = new Command( "Exit", Command.SCREEN, 1 ); 026     //SF Weather URL. 027     private static final String SF_URL = 028         "http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/forecasts/city/ca/san_francisco.txt"; 029  030     /** 031      * Weather MIDlet constructor. 032      */ 033     public Weather() { 034        display = Display.getDisplay(this); 035     } 036  037     /** 038      * This will be invoked when we start the MIDlet. 039      * Display the downloaded data. If an error occurs while downloading 040      * the data display the error to user. 041      * 042      */ 043     public void startApp() { 044         try { 045             getViaStreamConnection(); 046         } catch (IOException e) { 047             Form forecast = new Form("Error Downloading"); 048             forecast.append(e.getMessage()); 049             forecast.addCommand( exitCommand ); 050             forecast.setCommandListener( this ); 051             display.setCurrent(forecast);        052        } 053     } 054  055     /** 056      * Pause, discontinue .... 057      */ 058     public void pauseApp() { 059  060     } 061  062     /** 063      * Destroy. Cleanup everything. 064      */ 065     public void destroyApp(boolean unconditional) { 066     } 067  068     /** 069      * Download the weather and display it. 070      * 071      * @throws IOException when IO Error occurs while downloading 072      *  data from URL. 073      */ 074     private void getViaStreamConnection() throws IOException { 075         StreamConnection sc = null; 076         InputStream in = null; 077         StringBuffer b = new StringBuffer(); 078  079         try { 080           sc = (StreamConnection)Connector.open(SF_URL); 081           in = sc.openInputStream(); 082           int ch; 083           while ((ch = in.read()) != -1) { 084              b.append((char) ch); 085           } 086  087         } finally { 088            if (in != null) { 089               in.close(); 090            } 091            if (sc != null) { 092               sc.close(); 093            } 094         } 095  096         Form forecast = new Form("Weather at SF"); 097         forecast.append(b.toString()); 098         forecast.addCommand( exitCommand ); 099         forecast.setCommandListener( this ); 100         display.setCurrent(forecast); 101     } 102  103     /** 104      * Indicates that a command event has occurred on Displayable d. 105      * @param c - a Command object identifying the command. 106      * @param d - the Displayable on which this event has occurred. 107      */ 108     public void commandAction( Command c, Displayable d ){ 109         if (c == exitCommand){ 110             exit(); 111         } 112     } 113  114   /** 115    * Distroy app when exit button is used. 116    */ 117     private void exit(){ 118         destroyApp(true); 119         notifyDestroyed(); 120     }     121  122 }

You can download Weather.jar and Weather.jad directly. Tested on my i88s. Here is the screen snapshot of Motorola i88s simulator:



This can be further extended to support features like:
1. Select the city where you want weather forcast(using kxml)
2. If your phone supports GPS( like my Motorola i88s), you can display weather forecasts for your current location.

M$: MSBuild - M$ version of ANT

Microsoft is coming up with a build tool(MSBuild). MSBuild is the next generation build engine and platform for Visual Studio .NET. Microsoft has a session about the new build system during Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2003.
From introduction it looks like it will ship with the .NET redistributable and not Visual Studio. Also it appears that MSBuild will be an XML based Ant like tool with XML files to drive the build. Of course a similar build tool exist as Nant.
This is yet another block that has been missing in .NET (compared to J2EE) that Microsoft decided to fill.

J2SE: Taking screen snapshots in JAVA

As programmers many a times we need take snap shots of our screens. If we can take snap shot in java why use OS specific way to take a snap shot?
Here is a simple code example of taking snapshot in java (Either PNG format or JPEG format):

01 import java.awt.AWTException; 02 import java.awt.Dimension; 03 import java.awt.Rectangle; 04 import java.awt.Robot; 05 import java.awt.Toolkit; 06 import java.awt.image.RenderedImage; 07 import java.io.File; 08 import java.io.IOException; 09 import javax.imageio.ImageIO; 10  11 /** 12  * A Simple program that saves current screen snapshot. 13  * Supported formats png and jpg. 14  * Usage java ScreenSnapShot <<outputfilename>> 15  * 16  * @author Kumar Mettu 17  * @version 0.61 18  */ 19 public class ScreenSnapShot { 20  21     public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException,AWTException { 22  23         String saveFileName = "default.png"; 24         String saveFileFormat = "png"; 25  26         if (args.length > 0) 27             saveFileName = args[0]; 28  29         if (saveFileName.toLowerCase().endsWith(".png")) { 30             saveFileFormat = "png"; 31         } else if (saveFileName.toLowerCase().endsWith(".jpg") || 32                    saveFileName.toLowerCase().endsWith(".jpeg")) { 33             saveFileFormat = "jpg"; 34         } else { 35             System.err.println("Only png and jpg formats are supported."); 36             System.exit(1); 37         } 38  39         // get current sceen size for snapshot. 40         Dimension screenSize = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize(); 41         Rectangle screenRect = new Rectangle(screenSize); 42  43         // create current screen snapshot 44         RenderedImage image = (new Robot()).createScreenCapture(screenRect); 45  46         if (ImageIO.write(image, saveFileFormat, new File(saveFileName))) { 47             System.out.println("Screen snap shot is saved as :" + saveFileName); 48         } else { 49             System.out.println("Unable to save snap shot"); 50         } 51     } 52 }

This code requires J2SE1.4. There is no real use of this code unless you extend it to make use of it(like taking snapshots at fixed intervals etc...).

General: China to help Europe develop GPS rival

New Scientist reports China has joined a European effort to develop a new global satellite navigation system that would offer a more accurate civilian alternative to the Global Positioning System. The Galileo system will be precise to within a meter, while the civilian GPS service is accurate to around 10 meters. This development adds to the consternation of the U.S. military, which controls the GPS and currently enjoys the option of downgrading the civilian service during military conflicts.

Microsoft links with Motorola to launch mobile phone

Telegraph | Money | Microsoft links with Motorola to launch mobile phone: "Microsoft's bid to dominate the market for mobile phone operating systems will receive a boost today when the US software giant launches its first phone with a major handset maker."

Untold story:In a related product launch Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer Microsoft Corp announced general availability of the Blue Screen of Death sized down for use in Motorola handset

J2SE: A nice tool to learn API differences

JDiff is a Javadoc doclet which generates an HTML report of all the packages, classes, constructors, methods, and fields which have been removed, added or changed in any way, including their documentation, when two APIs are compared. This is very useful for describing exactly what has changed between two releases of a product. Only the API (Application Programming Interface) of each version is compared. It does not compare what the source code does when executed.

Sample Reports:
Comparing J2SE1.4.0 and J2SE1.4.1
Comparing J2SE1.3.1 and J2SE1.4