Nokia IndiBlogger Meet: Your Wish Is My App

To describe myself as brand loyal would be an overstatement, as I will switch loyalties the second a brand disappoints me. When it comes to Nokia, I have never been disappointed. Over the years I have owned three mobile phones- Nokia 6275 CDMA, Nokia E63 and currently using Nokia Lumia 720. So, it was a nice to hear that Nokia collaborated with IndiBlogger again for the second season for Your Wish Is My App program- an initiative to find the most creative and the best ideas from none other than but the people who use these phones. This program is in sync with Nokia’s very own ideology of “Connecting People” and I find it refreshing that a brand cares so much. The most successful businesses in the world have always been about people.

IndiBlogger had organised the meet at the Oberoi Hotel, New Delhi. It’s a really nice place, and the venue couldn’t have been better. The food, the drinks, and the ambience were no less than awesome. The evening was hosted by Rajiv Makhni, Vikas Khanna and Vishal Gondol.

 

The evening started with Kartik introducing a masked man posing as everybody including Ms. Poonam, who later on addressed us and introduced us to the YWMA program. Mr. P Balaji, MD@ Nokia then gave us real insights into the philosophy behind the program, and how user perception of mobile has transformed over the decade.

 

There were a lot of engaging activities which had everyone picking their brains for ideas. The friendly banter between the hosts Rajiv Makhni and Vikas Khanna over food related applications were no less entertaining. They had everyone in splits.

My app idea: Augmented Reality- Connecting People

Nokia recently introduced a concept of Augmented Reality. The technology is really simple, you simply open an app such as Nokia City Lens and look around through that app as if you were taking a photograph, but what you really see is hotspots around you- places of interest for dining, exploring, cafes, maybe some museum, an art exhibition etc.

I was thinking, why not use the same technology for doing what Nokia does best? Connecting People!

This augmented reality lens can be used to find and chat with other people, people can make their profiles and share some information such as their interests, a status update on this public profile they wish to share with other people, and this way they could communicate and meet new people, make new friends! People can now never complain about not knowing other people when you go to someplace different.

This app can also be used in more than one way, for instance, people all over the world often share cabs at airports. One could simply integrate it as a feature into the app, all you would have to do is look through the app and find the person who wants to go to the same destination as yours. And voila!

This idea is really unique and good as it underlines the core philosophy of Nokia- the people. It connects them, and there’s some real synergy between what’s being said and done at Nokia.

This is my entry for IndiBlogger and Nokia Your Wish Is My App program, and I really do hope that this idea is converted into an app.

So, till the next IndiBlogger meet when we all come together, I part with HURR HURR!

Poorly written programs are one of the greatest bothers. I myself wrote one such program apparently with a query which ran good the first time, but stubbornly refused to budge the second time. Now I am sure there would have been a mistake on my part, something which I overlooked, but what followed this has been well a nightmare (literally) as I spent a whole 6 hours trying to figure out a solution.

So, like any other programmer, I looked up google. Randomly, I had an idea to dump all my result set into a CSV, and then upload the CSV to MySql. Not as easy as it sounds. My table had 30000 entries, should have taken anything from 10 to 30 minutes to upload it through the in-built MySql utility.

But lady luck it seems eludes me in constant perpetuity.

The utility made my MySql Workbench crash after running for 30 minutes. Twice.

So, I began to look for more ways to upload/convert csv data to MySql. Now, what I found next was smart and nice, but essentially crude.

For instance, there are 8 different columns in my table. I opened the CSV file in MS-Excel, and wrote a formula to combine the data from the 8 cells into a well formatted SQL insert statement.

And, voila! I now have 30000 insert statements running in batches of 100. I believe it will take around 30 minutes to execute, but my MySql Workbench isn't crashing, and more importantly I am getting some work done.

I hear there's some research going on self-correcting programs, or where you specify just the algorithm and the IDE generates a program for you, but I fear that it will put programmers like me out of jobs, and there will be a state of anarchy, as that will also be the day, when the machines rise against the humans. Though I am quite curious, as to whether it will end up like The Matrix or the Terminator!