The Android newbie..

Have been a bit on the busy side the last couple of days. One main reason is that my company gave me a brand new phone. It is a phone new to the company as well and I have volunteered to be the Guinea pig on this one..

After getting so many complaints from me about poor AT&T service on my iPhone (note we live in Cupertino, the birthplace of apple but the iPhone has the worst signal coverage with AT&T in this area as the locals have banned the cell phone towers around us as it will be an eyesore on the mountain skyline!) switched me over to Sprint. Also this happens to be an android phone.

Right now there are 4 bars on the phone and the phone works as a phone very well. (Duh?)

It took me two days to figure out the menus, the look and feel of the phone as well as andoid quirks. Have almost made the menus and screens look identical to what was on my iPhone! We are creatures of habit and the fingers automatically to to a certain spot on the phone to check calendar, mail or make a phone call... so now we have an Android phone with 4 rows of 4 apps which look 1:1 like the iPhone screen.

The kids helped me find their stuff too and it is all in there on the second and third screen..

Only issues so far?

No way to see Tamil Fonts. People write stuff in Tamil in emails sent to me, google+ etc and all I get is a bunch of rectangles. Don't know if there is an easy way to support complex fonts or the Android guys simply havent provided support for Tamil fonts yet..

The iPhone was showing Tamil fonts fine. It just didn't work well as a phone...

Also this thing has two cameras, one on the front as well and should enable video chat! Except the gtalk has no videochat enabled on this. So we have to download some other app to do this and sign into google through that app. Do not know how safe that is. So if you have figured out a way to do gtalk with video on a Photon 4G, let me know as well.

Thanks in advance.

Also, many thanks to all of you who gave us tips on the whole birth certificate thing. Really really helpful. Much appreciated!

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Image compression ...

Old Image from previous post which was larger size (3051 pixel width) and sharpened in Canon DPP to +7

New image reduced to 1280 pixel width and sharpened in Canon DPP only to +3 before uploading..

I Stand corrected.. no difference in compression! Apologies to Google..

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What has happened to Google news?

Was a big fan of google news. Yes, it is now in past tense.

Seriously, the first time I had clicked on the News link when it was there, I was hooked.

You got world news on top. You almost clicked the news button on top and what you were looking for was usually the number 1 link.. right there as though they read your mind!

You could also scroll down just half a page and fast flip links to things that interest you!

Now, it is all messed up. You get local weather which we don't need google to tell us. Based on searching (through google) looks like the changes are permanent and there is no plan to give an option to revert back to the old settings! Apparently that is to help the user!!

Local news which we usually don't care about.

Taking off any flexibility of even seeing what you want in a format you want, all in the name of personalization.

Why did Google do this?

Did they ever ask folks in the top of the news page "Are you happy with Google news? do you want any changes? Do you want us to be more like Bing news or Yahoo news? If we copied those pages would you still read Google news?"

etc. etc. and my bet is the answer would have been "do not mess with this product" from most folks who read it.

Why Google? Why?

Why would a company that was doing a lot of things right now doing a lot of things wrong?

The mess with Buzz, now the mess with News?

Do you hire too many people from Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook recently?



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They sure get creative, don't they?

This crossed the spam filter and presented itself in the Inbox!

Very creative way to get your account info, no?


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Buzz ain't bad for a bumblebee like me..

Ok, there is a lot of negativity these days around anything Google.

Since I am not employed by google, am a self proclaimed techno nerd (not the software type though), and have had an open love-hate relationship when it comes to the products they dish out, here is an open heartfelt feedback of why this is actually a good thing..

1. Now that they fixed this contact business, it is no different from facebook. You can share all info to all public or choose to share your info with select people. You do have to invest some time and effort to set up the group lists for friends, family, etc. etc.. then what you share gets viewed by different people. Have checked it out and it works nicely. (it also tells you which items you shared with the world and which ones with family).

see the example shot below..




2. if all your buddies put their accounts and share it in the buzz stream, you get to see their feeds, tweets etc. just like you see blogposts on reader. the look and feel of a reader is maintained.

3. You don't have spam on this yet with stuff like "so and so took the How much do you know Shah Rukh Khan quiz and scored 13%. would you like to take the quiz?", in a quiz where even Shah Rukh would score only 5%.

4. the picture viewing is great!

5. It is almost a blogger and reader combined into one.

Now, if google makes you selectively embed links and images into the text box.. in other words, integrate the blog editor into buzz status updater, and have the ability to selectively show only my posts in the buzz stream, then will I even use blogger? highly unlikely.

So when people say Buzz is trying to replace facebook, twitter etc.. it also seems to be trying to replace blogger and blogreader as well!

They should have done this two years ago!

Just look at who are on your facebook list. Friends from school, college, work, friends you make thanks to who your kids go to school with, friends you make because of your hobbies and that is pretty much it.

It is usually the same bunch of people you email the most. I fundamentally had an issue with Facebook calling everyone a "friend", be it an acquaintance or a thick pal and almost stopped using it because of how it had security issues. Facebook fixed those issues and have a way to send your status updates to select folks only and have a way for you to say "NO" when it comes to information on your profile going out.

Buzz is doing the same thing.. It does surprise me that they didn't learn from the mistakes of Facebook before launching Buzz! The good thing with Google is that the react fast when you point out things to them.

Looks like someone heard my plea for a one stop shop with one login!

The second impression on this one is "I could get used to this!"




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Gwitterboocasa!

The new Buzz by Google integrates gmail, status updating, picassa, flickr, blogger feeds..and for some funny reason, even your chat status!

all you have to do is to click on the Buzz under your Inbox in gmail to start using it..

An interesting concept..

Will have to wait and see how it grows on you!



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Instant Jaya Lakshmi and Tamil Girls for a price

You have probably heard of instant noodles and Instant Idiyappam and even instant soup..

But have you heard of Instant Jaya Lakshmi?

The google ads that pop up on the sidebar on gmail have always provided me with a source of amusement.

Today was no different. was reading an email from Tamil School and on the side there were the usual "find hot pics of Kavya" type ads... (guess if there is someone called Kavya on the cc list, it picks up this ad!)

So you can imagine how uncorrelated the ads are to the context.

Today we found Instant Jaya Lakshmi and as an added bonus found out that there is a place where you can get a good price on Tamil girls!




They have become a commodity now! Apparently there is so much competition for Tamil Girls that there are 500 sites selling them. Told Jr. that they are virus sites and you should not click on the ads on the side, even if you are curious...

I let my daughter read the emails we get from Tamil School. Do Not think Google Ads are safe anymore for kids.

There is no screening of any kind on these ads.

Seriously thinking of taking away Jr.'s email till she is a little older...



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