Aliaser works by monitoring your bash history. It analyses command frequency and suggests candidates for aliasing. It manages aliases so created. The feature I like most in Aliaser is that it reminds you to use the aliases you created by showing tips on opening a new terminal session.

Download Aliaser from http://aliaser.googlecode.com.

To learn more about Microsoft Surface head over to:

• Microsoft’s page on Surface
• Wikipedia article on Microsoft Surface
• Watch a Youtube video on Microsoft Surface

Unboxing Pictures

Some observations:

• It is very heavy!
• and expensive (around $15,000)
• The power socket is hidden underneath and is very difficult to access. The power button is equally well hidden and difficult to find.
• Installation was non-trivial. The touch input did not start working out of the box. We had to use the bundled mouse to initial installation steps.
• The “surface shell” with the ripples in the water is a great way to understand the potential of this device. It feels like you are touching water! and your brain expects that water will drip when you lift your fingers up. I think it is more realistic (compared to devices with smaller touch screens) because of the size of the display and the fact that it is aligned horizontally making it more natural.
• Since rear-projection is used for the display, the viewing angle is very wide (nearly 180 degrees)
• The matte finish on the touch surface as a good feel (almost like paper).

In between I did some projects using Java, C#, C, C++. None of these impressed me too much. I hated Java’s imposition of stiff rules and it’s dogged adherence to “everything in a class” attitude. C# was better. C++ just turned me off because of the monster it is. I did not like C at all because of its total lack of automated memory handling (like GC). I’ve been doing a lot of coding in C now-a-days as part of my job and I must admit that I like it a lot for its simplicity in primitives and promise of “closeness to hardware” and hence the predictability and performance.

I did a small part of my final year project using Python. However, for some unfathomable reason, Python did not impress me at all then. When I started working at Veveo I used Python for a project and got hooked. It’s simplicity and “readability” got me. The power of wielding this tool got me drunk

Python was designed from the beginning to be a “easy to read” language. Most, if not all, of the syntax is intuitive. The indentation adds to the readability aspect. The policy of “only one way to do a thing” does wonders for readability. Everyone does a certain thing only the “one” way. If you are wondering why the heck I am talking so much about readability, you should consider the fact that an average programmer spends most of his time “reading” code. You have to read your code after you’ve just written it. You’ve to read your code the next day when you resume work. You’ve to read your code the moment a bug is found. You have to read your code when someone asks you how some aspect of it works a couple of months later. You’ve have to read your code when making a teeny-weeny feature addition. I just cannot emphasize enough how much time is spent is just reading. There have been times when I would spend a whole day just reading code and finally making “a single line of code change” at the end of the day!

So there it is. Python makes it possible to write readable code and that does wonders to programmer productivity. Maintaining your code becomes easier. Understanding your collegues code becomes easier and most of all understanding code written by someone across the world becomes easier – so you can start reusing components more quickly and with more confidence than ever before.

I simply love Python.

You must be wondering where I am taking this discussion… because the title says something about a Python being abused. Who is abusing the Python anyway?

I’ve noticed how newbies code in Python and found it particulary intriguing. What is interesting here is that every person comes from a certain programming background and are used to doing things in a certain way. When they are thrown into a situation where they have to learn a new language and write some code in it, they invariably apply the vast experience they have in their language of choice

I’ve had the oppurtunity of observing people from Java, C, Perl, VB (yes, Perl) backgrounds writing code in Python. The Java guys stress test multiple inhertitance in Python and bring the much cherished “everything in a class” practice to the Python. The C guys who are more often than not obsessed with performace and optimization put their brains to work and implement a strcpy using a “for loop” and insist on doing a “shift” instead of “division/multiplication”. The Perl guys just don’t seem to like the alphanumerals. They craft Python code with ingenious application making it look very concise. The more characters in one line the better the code. The more non-alphanumerals the better coder you are. That’s the way of the “Perl’ies”. The VB guys languish for a while complaining constantly about the lack of a proper IDE and after trying out various Python editors, decide to call it quits and go home to comfortable VB. I know, I know ….. I was a VB guy too and I did search for IDE’s too … But then I found VIM and everything was good

I’ve had the good (snigger) fortune of maintaining some of these brilliant artifacts and had my share of nightmares and laugh-outs. I thought I had seen it all, until I saw something today. I told myself — “Never underestimate a brilliant C programmer who has found exec and eval in Python” … Yes, you can quote me on this

    guido = "is speechless"
    larry = "went nuts"
    sergey = "has seen it all now"
    ...
    ...
    for idx in ['guido','larry','sergey']:
        idxv=eval(idx)
        if(not idxv and dd.has_key(idx)):
            idxv='%s="%s"' %(idx,dd[idx])
            exec(idxv)

    ...
    ...

No….. I don’t think I’ve seen it all….

I was able to search videos on a “Sony Ericsson k710i” on Airtel in Chennai, India but video playback did not work as Airtel is blocking “rtsp” streams. If it works for you, do drop me a line with your phone model and name of network operator.

http://m.vtap.com

Here is the embed code. Enjoy I will blog shortly about other interesting ways of embedding this.

If you still haven’t seen our product, check it out here.

To give you a taste of how the feedback has been, I’ve pasted below excerpts from around the web.

This is a killer app for your cell phone or iPhone – Robert Scoble

Vtap returns outstanding results – Rafe Needleman

It does an impressive job of delivering video clips that are closer to my desires than the big two Web engines (referring to Google and Yahoo!) – Steve Smith

vTap really looks like it could become a must-have app for video search and playback on mobiles – PatrickJ

vTap is dope. It is one of the best apps out there, even in its beta stage. My wife even enjoyed playing with it, and she is the most technically challenged person I know (besides my mother in law) – sharpdude

I have played with vTap and yeah it’s pretty cool – zbop

This is one of the greatest WM apps I have used – FragMeister

I love this player like i love your mom — long time! This player is smoother than silk, blockbuster movie of the week style….and of course, monday night football!_!_!_!_!_!_! – JoHnNyLaVaH

Somehow, vTap has ramped up search engine indexing to warp speed – Unknown

This is cool … Type in “kitten” and it shows in nanoseconds all the relative stuff about kittens. Really fast, as from software point and in downloading videos. Seems to have gazillion video sites. Plays videos really smooth. – Demens

vTap videos may have just started a new video revolution with a portal like setup on your mobile devices for all the major video web sites, which has all the online videos of news weather and sports that have taken place in the past 24hrs and more. You name the subject and vTap has a video on that subject, amazing technology to have on the homepage of your mobile device. … like having a Satellite TV Dish on your smartphone/PPc device …

(vTap) videos is the most powerful video program for all smartphones and pocketPc devices to hit the market to date. There is no other video program for mobile devices that can surpass its ability to connect you to current events at light speed, (very fast). This video program can only get better………….!

the superior product to all other video program/applications. Think about it, you can have (vTap) videos on your today’s homepage screen of your mobile device, one click action with instant connections to just about all the videos on the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW.). Another thing I like about (vTap) videos, the connection speed is awesome, with (vTap) videos and global TV, all on one mobile device is mind blowing… – Technology

It really is an amazing product. I found that while searching, if you see a folder — It’s all the videos for a site, like ‘MSN’ — that folder gets you a list of all the MSNBC videos. Same for YouTube — that folder gets you to YouTube vids. Once in a folder, your searching is done for that site. vTap just ‘knew’ [what I was looking for]. Amazing stuff. I saw a video interview of the creator of vTap, in it he mentioned making the searching transparent and easy for the user, that they do a lot behind the scenes to make it all simple, easy to use — yet powerful. They got it right! vTap is >>>a lot<<< more enjoyable, useful, and addicting than YouTube alone. - chaznet

I think this is the coolest app . I makes my iPhone all the better – renee7353

Wow, very nice, love how it shows all videos, organizes some into videos, shows all video sites, etc and is VERY fast in both displaying videos and information as well as buffering and showing the actual video – BBowermaster

wow, I’m kinda impressed with this, it does pretty much what it claims. Video is smooth and clear as well … I hope they continue to tweak this app a bit, i’m blown away by it’s potential. I love the inclusion of wiki search, and the context sensitive typing. – nautica2450

have this installed on my treo and it works great. i have to say this is a fairly phenomenal little program. i wonder what tab they’ll add next – jmodica1

It’s a really sweet app, and just made my “must have” list for installs. I like how if you do a site search and type in something that has mutliple episodes like Family Guy a whole folder comes up..pretty sweet – scotbotmosh

Great little program! Now I can easily see the youtube videos that are “Must see” by friends wherever I am… Very cool little prog, and I like the Wiki search too incase I need info on the quick. – AFAngryWarrior

Wow! I just downloaded and installed this little gem. Well, not so little but still a gem. For the PPC-6700, it’s definitely the best solution yet. YouTube and other links appear to be flawless and very stable. Buffering is automatically fast enough even in my fringe EVDO area. – WanderingMinstrel

the Wikipedia search is outstanding! – jamesus

I LOVE THIS AP! This is what a converged device needs! – nuguy

Now this is pretty cool! … It turns your device into an ultra powerful interface to Wikipedia. It’s fast and video plays smooth. – lukeap69

This is by far the best web video solution out. It searches all kinds of sites not just youtube – blazemanner

People, it works. This is the best YouTube solution for the Blackjack I’ve ever seen, and it’s free. Videos take less than 10 seconds to load and those I’ve played thus far play flawlessly. vTap is the real deal and works as advertised. I don’t think I’ll ever have to rely on TCPMP or Blueapple again. I’m a very happy vTapper! – ahearst

I wanted to bring to the forefront a cool new tool, http://vtap.com/, that allows for video search on mobile handhelds (specifically iphones and window media based cell phones). With Veveo’s vTap, mobile users (especially me) can finally get to the full universe of Web videos (user generated content, sports clips, news stories, cult classic, etc) … I think this is a great sidekick to help with my research, curiosity, and entertainment. – fongfooey3

[vTap is] an absolutely excellent application … It works perfectly and does exactly what it says on the tin … this one definitely goes onto our “must download” list … It’s a great interface into Wikipedia and a brilliant way to search through online video sites and watch the vids too … will let you search and then view YouTube videos, Google videos, MSN videos, MySpace videos and much much more. The quality of the video can be adjusted and it’ll even give you a preview shot and description of the video before you download it! … Top stuff. – Unknown

The search was quite accurate & responsive and I was able to play videos from various sources like YouTube, DailyMotion and Metacafe. Veveo’s vTap will definitely be one of the iPhone applications that will be favorites list when I get my hands on the iPhone. – Unknown

I think vTap is the best video/You Tube player for the Samsung Blackjack I’ve ever seen. It’s a search engine and video clip player all in one. I came away very impressed after initial use and I highly recommend it. It blows TCPMP and Blueapple out of the water; in fact I may keep my Blackjack longer than I thought I would as a result of using vTap. I had every intention of picking up a 3G Apple iPhone upon its release next year but with vTap I can put an iPhone purchase on hold for now. – ahearst

Some videos have popped up demonstrating vTap:

Scoble Interview: VTap brings innovative video search to cell phones. [MP4] [WMV]

Video has become the hot new thing over the past few years. Youtube, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Myspace, Google Video had been jostling for maximum space in the video arena for the PC. However, the experience on mobile phones has been lacking. The closest somebody before Veveo had come to solve it was Youtube on the iPhone. Even this falls short because the videos have to be encoded to H.264 and Youtube has only transitioned a couple of thousand videos to this.

The problem with this is that someone else chooses which videos are best for you and compiles a collection for you. That’s like a search engine compiling a small collection of web pages available online for you as compared to Google letting you search a huge index. Another issue on mobile phones is that entering text is a pain in the ass

Also most mobile phones dont play Flash videos. This means Youtube goes right out of the window. If you want to access any web video available on the Internet from the mobile then your phone has to contend with Quicktime, RealMedia, WindowMedia and a myriad other video formats.

Here is where we come in,

* Gigantic video index (several tens of millions) and growing rapidly
* Incremental, Hierarchical search
* Format conversion (Transcoding)

VTap’s crawler has indexed a majority of videos online and I should say is quite comprehensive. You name it, we got it. Since it is such a pain entering text into the mobile, VTap searches as you type – letter by letter. For most searches, you won’t have to complete the words. I could search for “Hotel california” by typing in “ho ca” and got it as the first result! When you want to watch a youtube video (which is Flash), VTap transcodes the video on-the-fly and serves it out in the format the your phone can play.

Search for a Hotel California video

The home screen of the widget shows latest news stories which are constantly updated.

Windows mobile client. I worked on the player and play list management

Ajax app for the iPhone

We currently support Windows Mobile and iPhone. Java and more are in the works. Until the support comes to your mobile, you can get the feel here.

Buzz on the web
Video of our CEO, Murali Aravamudan demoing to Robert scoble
vTap Will Revitalise Mobile Video Search – Paul Bennett
Vtap, easy mobile search – Matt Marshall
Coming soon: Outstanding mobile video search from Veveo – Rafe Needleman
Veveo Wants to Bring All Video to iPhone – Om Malik

Please do check it out and let me know what you think. If you like it, call your friends over too!