Hasan Shahriar Masud

iGoogle Gadget: Send SMS

Now you can add Send SMS gadget in your iGoogle homepage and can send free sms to Banglalink and CityCell mobile phone in bangladesh. Trust me. It's completely free and it works. The mobile number just has to subscribe smsmail service from their provider. That's all. Sending and receiving sms will be completely free.

It's very easy to add Send SMS gadget in your iGoogle homepage

Login to iGoogle homepage
Click Add Stuff
Click Add by URL
Enter the url: http://www.hsmasud.com/mailsms/smsgadget.xml
Click Add Button.
Click Ok button in the popup dialog box.
Go back to your iGoogle homepage.

Music Manager 1.1

Download Music Manager 1.1
Download Music Manager 1.0 from download.com

Introduction

I am using Creative Nano to listen music. It's good to use. But managing songs was little problem. Because it has a folder view where I can switch from one folder to other. But it displays all the folder containing mp3 songs in the same level. So, I had to create folder according to the artist name. But it becomes problem to create the folders manually. So, I tried to use the software which can sync music with a removable drive. For that I found windows media player is useful. But in case of my mp3 player there is a big problem. Windows media player creates folder name as [Artist Name][Album Name][File Name]. So, in my mp3 player I can see only the album name which is most of the time not correct. Infect I want to switch from one artist to another. So, I decided to make my own program which can sync according to my choice.

Then I found that It should have a play feature too. I don't want to use different application for playing music while I'm copying music to my music player. So, I added the entire feature which helps to listen music from my MP3 player.
Then I designed a probability based random music playing algorithm which would monitor my choice and play music according to that. I found it's very useful to listen music. I was using iTunes before I designed Music Manager. So, the look becomes similar to iTunes. I think this representation of music is better then windows media player.

Description

Manage your music library

To import your existing music from your computer you can browse the location of your music folder and then press the Load button. It will search all the music recursively and add to the library. It creates a MMHistory.mmh file for each folder you are interested for. It uses relative location. So, if you copy this folder to some other location and browse the folder with Music Manager then it will load the MMHistory.mmh file and can play music.

To manage music you can copy music from music manger, paste to music manager and delete music from your music folder with Music Manager. You can also drag and drop music to Music Manager. It will copy according to the file name format you specified in the options.

File name formats are as follows...
{Album}{Artist}{FileName}
{Artist}{Album}{FileName}
{Artist}{FileName}
{Album}{FileName}
{FileName}
{Album}{Artist}{Title}
{Artist}{Album}{Title}
{Artist}{Title}
{Album}{Title}
{Title}
{Genre}{Album}{Artist}{FileName}
{Genre}{Artist}{Album}{FileName}
{Genre}{Album}{Artist}{Title}
{Genre}{Artist}{Album}{Title}
So, you can manage your music according to the information available in mp3 file.
You can also paste windows media player play list (.wpl) to music manager. Music manager will copy all the music listed in the play list to the location you specified with your specified file name format.
You can also use add files, add folder from file menu to copy music to the specified location.
If you delete a file from the Music Manager library then it will delete from the physical location too.

Now let's discuss about the probability based random music player

When we play music we follow some patterns. Like if you selected a classical music then you might choose another classical music. Now in that classical music there is a high probability that the next song sang by the same artist or from the same album. So, we can conclude that selecting the next music depends on the previous music. Now let's discuss how I designed the random music player...

I used a simulation technics called Morkov Chain. Initially all the music has same priority. Let's say it's 1.
If there are n music then probability for each music is 1/n. When user plays a music Music Manager increase the priority for that music to one unit. So, after playing the first music it's priority becomes 2 and probability of that music becomes 2/(n+1) and probability of the other music is 1/(n+1). Simply the probability of a music is Priority/(Tota Priority)

Now when user plays a music Music Manager increase priority to all the music belongs to the same genre. Music Manager adds the average priority of a genre to all the music belongs to that genre. So, priority gets increased for that genre. Then the next priority is the artist. Si, all the music sang by the same artist gets increased by it's average priority. Similerly it adds the album priority. In this part user cannot control the priority. But user can add additional priority specified in option dialog. The user defined priority is added to every songs according to the genre, artist and album.

User might not expect same music play repeatitively. So, user can check the Do not repeat untill all music are played check box in the options. User can define a priority to repeat the music too. In that case a played music's priority is decrease with the factor defined by the user. If it is 20 the maximum value then Music Manager doesn't decrease the priority of a played song.

So, this random player playes according to the user's choice and the prediction that user would like the next music from the same genre or from the same artist or album. So, it's has become more interesting then any other random music player.

The priority of a music permanently increased in two cases.

User selects a music and play manually
User listen the music completely

So, if user does not like the randomly choosen music then he can skip or play the next music then no priority is added to that music. If user plays a music manually and listen the complete music then the priority increased by two units. Thus it build the probability database. The average priority of the gener, artist or album is not saved in the database. It is needed to affect the probability distribution based on the playing music.

What's new in Music Manager 1.1?

WMA support to music manager. I thanked Dava.Kelly for sending me the code to support wma file.

To designe this application I used some codes downloaded from code project. I thanks to the authors of that code.

Micro Money 3.0

Download:

To download and install Micro Money visit http://www.hsmasud.com/micromoney/ from your mobile phone browser.

Manual Downloads:

Device Configuration: MIDP 1.0/2.0 CLDC: 1.0 click here.
Device Configuration: MIDP 1.0/2.0 CLDC: 1.0 for Motorola click here.
Device Configuration: MIDP 1.0/2.0 CLDC: 1.1 click here.
Device Configuration: MIDP 1.0/2.0 CLDC: 1.1 for Motorola click here.

Background

I always feel that I am so busy that I don’t have enough time to keep track of my income and expenditure. In fact, I could not found a solution which can solve my problem. So, I always felt that I don’t know where my money is going. I tried to write my expenditure in a notebook. But I could not even manage a notebook to write. Then I started using excel sheet to manage my expenditure. But within a few days I found that I’m not happy with it. I think, I’m not that good at excel. By this time one of my friends introduced me Microsoft Money 2004. I found it’s very interesting and useful. Actually, I liked the product and started using it. But sometimes I don’t get enough time to open my computer or felt bored to open Microsoft Money to record my transactions. So, I was loosing details of my expenditure. I needed something which I can carry all the time and keep track of my money. So, I purchased a new cell phone (as I lost the older one which did not have computer interface). The now one has computer interface. It can run J2ME. I did never worked in Java. So, I asked my colleague to help me to write a “hello world” application in J2ME. He introduced me NetBeans 5.5 with mobile toolkit. Thus I started writing Micro Money.

Introduction

Micro Money is a J2ME application which can keep track of financial transactions of a personal. It has a very easy interface to enter transaction details. It can show different type of reports based on the transactions. As it is a J2ME application it runs in a small cell phone which, most of the people carry now a day. So, Micro Money is able to store transaction details whenever it is talking place. It can manage multiple accounts, transfer between accounts and many more.

Features of Micro Money

Daily Transaction View: It has a daily transaction view. Here user can manage their daily transactions. User can change date, by pressing the left and right buttons. The transactions are displayed under some categories. These can be scrolled by using up and down buttons. The currently opened transaction number and first four characters of the account name will be displayed at the left top corner of the display.
Add Transaction: User can enter a transaction by pressing the add button. By default Micro Money will display the daily expense view of the current system date. User can use left, right, up and down buttons to choose appropriate date and category, then press add to enter the amount. It will ask for the transaction amount only. Because, I felt that too many information would be very boring to enter.
Details: User can view transaction details by pressing details button. In details view user can edit payee, amount or delete transaction. To enter in the detail view user needs to select the transaction category in daily transaction view and press details button.
1. Edit: User can edit payee for a particular transaction.
2. Edit Amount: User can edit transaction amount by pressing edit amount button.
3. Delete: User can delete a particular transaction.
Transaction Categories: There are two types of transaction categories.
1. Spend: It manages the expenditure. Micro Money will create most commonly used categories.
2. Receive: It manages the income. Micro Money will create most commonly used categories.
Transfer: User can transfer money between Micro Money accounts. To transfer money user has to select from account, to account and then the amount. Micro Money will give a spend entry in from account and an receive entity in to account under Transfer category.
Accounts: User can add new account, edit existing account, delete account or open an account. The opened account will be displayed in bold letters and the account number will be shown at the header with first four characters of the account title.
Category: User can add new category, edit existing category, change the order or delete a category.
Report: User can display different type of report. The reports are as follows…
1. Monthly Spend/Receive Report: User can display monthly spend or expense report of the opened account. User can change month by pressing the left and right buttons.
2. Yearly Spend/Receive Report: User can display yearly spend or expense report of the opened account. User can change year by pressing the left and right buttons.
3. All Time Spend/Receive Report: User can display all time spend or expense report of the opened account.
4. Balance Report: This report shows the balance of all the accounts.
Jump to Date: User can jump to a particular date.
Jump Today: User can jump to the current system date.
Security: User can change password and turn on/off security. If user turns on the security then Micro Money will ask for the password at startup.

Send Free SMS

How it works?

Sending SMS is not free everywhere like Bangladesh. You have to pay for the SMS. The other option to send message is email. Most of the cell phone providers supports email service. In that case the sender doesn’t have to pay for the email, but the receiver has to pay if he/she wish to read the mail. So, most of the people doesn’t use email as a replacement of SMS. Still it is useful as anyone can send message from anywhere in the world. So, we can minimize the cost of transferring message by minimizing the SMS. I developed a system which will transfer your message without sending any SMS to the destination cell phone. Obviously I used email service to do that.

Most of the providers require registration to use email service. Usually the cell phone number becomes the email id in the providers domain. For example, if your cell phone number is 019XXXXXXX then the email address is 019XXXXXXX@banglalink.net because the cell phone provider is banglalink in Bangladesh and the domain name is banglalink.net. Similarly CityCell domain name is sms.citycell.com. Some providers creates email address other then the cell phone number. When you received an email your provider sends a notification SMS which is free. In that SMS the provider inform you that “You have a mail from info@hsmasud.com. Please SMS Read 10 to read the mail.”. If you send Read 10 to the specific number provided by the provider then provider sends the body of the email as SMS. In that case they charge you for the SMS you sent. If you look at the message then you would find that the sender’s email address is the only information which is sent by the sender. They don’t validate the information if it is a valid email address. The maximum length of an SMS is 160 characters. To notify the email address the provider uses about 50 characters. So, remaining 110 characters can be the email address. Here is my trick. I encrypted the message as a valid email address and send a email to the cell phone, where I put the encrypted email address as the sender of the email. So, the provider sends a notification with your encrypted email address.

For example,

If your message is “Hi, How are you? If you are free then let’s meet some time. Masud” This message can be encrypted as “hi.how.are.you.if.you.are.free.then.let.s.meet.some.time.masud@hsmasud.com”, which is a valid email address. So, your provider would notify you as “You have a mail from hi.how.are.you.if.you.are.free.then.let.s.meet.some.time.masud@hsmasud.com. Please SMS Read 10 to read the mail.”. Which is readable by the user. So, for this message no one has to pay. So, it’s free.

How can you send free SMS?

Visit http://www.hsmasud.com/modules.php?name=SMS and send free mail SMS. In this site I support only CityCell and Banglalink providers which are in Bangladesh.

If you look at the header of my blog site then you would see…

You can send SMS to me from here. Now if you want to use smiler feature in your site then you can do this very easily. To use this feature you just have to use the following code in to your site.

<iframe src="http://www.hsmasud.com/mailsms/sms.php?cellphoneno=019XXXXXX&domain=banglalink.net" align="right" frameborder="0" width="400pt" height="70pt" ></iframe>

Replace the cell phone number and the domain name according to your cell phone provider.

If have problem with getting messages then please make sure that your email service is working properly.

Note: Messages are not saved anywhere in my system. So, it as private as your email.

Light Note forum is available now

Light Note forum is available now. You can join this forum to submit your requirements or problems with Light Note. Your comments will definitly improve Light Note.

One year of hsmasud.com

hsmasud.com is now one year old. I registered hsmaud.com in 17th January, 2004. During this one year hsmasud.com was used an a personal home page. Now it's time to declare hsmasud.com as my official home page. In near future I'll try to help the software engineer's and other people related to IT market to innovate new ideas and products.

Light Note 2.2

Light Note is a new concept of writing and managing notes. The aim of Light Note is to make an easy and useful interface. Note doesn't necessary to be just few lines of text. Appointment, reminders, task, contacts, secret information can be treating as notes. Light note is the future for all these necessities in a single application. After I publish Light Note 1.0 I got a huge response from the user with various requirements. So, I had to meet some of the request and fix the bug found in Light Note 1.0. So, I released Light Note 2.0. Need of releasing Light Note 2.1 is the file format of Light Note. One of the user found an interesting problem with the file format I used in earlier version of Light Note. So, I modify the file format with file conversion facility. It's not a stable product. Now I got another developer with me. My colleague Omar Faruk is interested to voluntary in Light Note 2.2. So, we finalized the requirements and features for Light Note 2.2.

What's coming in Light Note 2.2?

Re- Organize Menu

Insert Image

Content Based Search

Insert another files

Password Protected Notes

Theme Manager

Light note will have easy navigation to show previous versions

Find & Replace

Better Painting and Rich Text Box

Manual Title Edit

Help file

Reminder

Hasan Shahriar Masud

iGoogle Gadget: Send SMS

Music Manager 1.1

Introduction

Description

Manage your music library

Now let's discuss about the probability based random music player

What's new in Music Manager 1.1?

Micro Money 3.0

Micro Money 3.0

Background

Introduction

Features of Micro Money

Send Free SMS

How it works?

How can you send free SMS?

Light Note Download Links

Light Note forum is available now

One year of hsmasud.com

Light Note 2.2