It’s been a while since I posted manually to the blog. Hopefully, that’ll change with my new phone with the wordpress app.
I got the phone last week and have been playing around with it ever since. It’s got Froyo on it and I’ve installed a ton of apps on it already. The experience has been quite similar yet different from my iPod touch. The app availability is quite similar, but the always connected nature of the phone opens up a new bunch of use cases.
I’ve been making use of the gps quite a bit with the My Tracks asp in particular to plot the routes I take. There have been some wow moments, particularly with the Google Goggles app. The built in tethering feature is also really handy though a bit of a battery hog. I’ll be posting more on the apps later with help from appbrain.
Battery life has however been on the poor side (most likely due to my heavy use) with almost 2 charges being required per day. Then again, my iPod doesn’t do much better if I use it heavily either. I’m currently using a Vodafone prepaid connection with 3G enabled on it. Speeds are pretty decent and a great leap over the GPRS days for sure. I also appreciate the openness of the Android platform as it allows one to work across apps quite nicely. There’s also the App Inventor to create your own simple apps.
I also had plans to buy a tablet – most likely the ipad – this year. However, the Android platform looks really promising on the tablet too, and in a year or so we should be having a well populated Android market for tablets to go with some very good hardware. That said, the iPad 2 remains the best tablet for the next few months.
And last but not the least, swype rocks. I wouldn’t have dreamt of typing out this post from my phone otherwise.
Author: Aditya
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My first Android – the Samsung Galaxy S i9003
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Links for the week ending 21-03-2011
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Short Stories: Mrs Packletide’s Tiger by Saki
Used to be part of the English CBSE textbook. Quite a humorous story
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Photo editing 101 star rating shoots aperture lightroom | Chase Jarvis Blog
A handy guide to trimming the number of photos to edit
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Canon lenses vs Nikon lenses 2009 – 2010
Nice roundup of the Canon & Nikon lens equivalents. Includes image quality ratings & price.
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Links for the week ending 14-03-2011
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How To Sync Your iPhone To Multiple Computers – iSmashPhone iPhone Blog
A handy little workaround
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Rock-Paper-Scissors: You vs. the Computer – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com
A neat little version with a learning computer or a learned one.
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You may use your class notes & Feynman
Since Caltech has an honor system most exams tend to be take home and open book. The instructor for the class will write any special directions at the top of the exam. For a freshman physics exam one year the instructions read:
You have 3 hours. You may use your class notes and Feynman.
“Feynman” of course referred the Feynman physics lecture notes which are published in three volumes.
On reading these instructions one particularly alert student grabbed his exam and raced across campus to Richard Feynman’s office. He handed the exam to Feynman explaining that the directions clearly indicated he was a valid resource. Feynman glanced over the instructions and agreed. He wrote out the exam in less than half an hour, and got a perfect score! -
Custom firmware that lets you enhance your camera (Canon 5D MkII & 550D supported as of early 2011), kinda like CHDK for the P&S cameras.
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A lot of lens reviews from users, including ratings.
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Article from the last millennium – all about the cuteness factor in Japan that impacts everyone starting from business to the government.
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Links for the week ending 07-03-2011
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Man upgrades Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 | WinRumors
An interesting concept plus a test of patience
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Sloppy Google – The Search Operators
A sloppy & sluggish version of Google
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Quite a lot of things to learn about exposure with a bunch of handy tips & references.
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DIY – Release Cable for Canon DSLRs | DIYPhotography.net
Quite a handy DIY. It also supports the shutter half press.
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Links for the week ending 21-02-2011
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Understanding Camera Autofocus
Quite a primer on camera auto-focus mechanisms
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11 Surefire Landscape Photography Tips
Food for thought
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Strategy Letter V – Joel on Software
Interesting article on commoditization. Microsoft did it pretty well in the PC era, while Sun shot itself in the foot by trying to commoditize both hardware & software. Wonder what happens in the mobile computing (smartphone\tablet\netbook) era. Will the app marketplaces do the trick?
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Links for the week ending 14-02-2011
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4 Walmart employees fired after disarming gunman caught shoplifting – ksl.com
Bureaucracy at its best. Hopefully the armed forces & police don’t have such clauses.
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Camels and Rubber Duckies – Joel on Software
How do you price software? Lots of theories ranging from basic macroeconomics to capitalism & the likes, but no definitive answer.
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City of Shadows – ALEXEY TITARENKO | PHOTOGRAPHY
Time-lapse + Black & White + Busy city = Haunting photographs
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ExposurePlot (former Focalplot)
A very handy tool to analyse the different parameters of your photograph.
“ExposurePlot (former FocalPlot) is a new free utility that analyzes your usage of the focal length of your lenses (jpeg only), show charts for ISO, aperture and shutterspeed.Great to determine which lens you ‘really’ need, or which lens did you actually use on the trip to the mountains.” -
Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT – comp.os.minix | Google Groups
Linus Torvalds’ post evangelizing Linux way back in 1991
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Links for the week ending 07-02-2011
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An interesting concept, plus the music is available for online viewing & download too right after the show is aired.
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(Less) Screwed-up Packaging – The Daily WTF
Individual boxes & packets for each screw. Now that’s really green.
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Why Letting Yourself Make Mistakes Means Making Fewer of Them | Psychology Today
“We approach most of what we do with one of two types of goals: what I call be-good goals, where the focus is on proving that you have a lot of ability and already know what you’re doing, and get-better goals, where the focus is on developing your ability and learning a new skill. It’s the difference between wanting to show that you are smart vs. wanting to get smarter.”
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The trouble with Steve – Mar. 4, 2008
An interesting article on Steve Jobs from the pre-iPad era. Also sheds light on some of the rarely featured issues on Apple & Jobs like the back dated stock options & Jobs’ personal life.
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Paths of Innovation: Fountain Pens | Slideshows
I wonder how many of my generation would have seen or even heard of any of these pens.
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The 7 Most Innovative iPad Apps of 2010 | Slideshows
A handy list with the following lineup:
– Alice in Wonderland e-book
– Flipboard
– Air Display
– Auryn Ink
– Sound Note
– iA Writer
– Infinity Blade -
Pretty interesting article with a bunch of techniques ranging from priming to taking care of your health.
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Links for the week ending 31-01-2011
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Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young — chicagotribune.com
An interesting read – “Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.”
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Links for the week ending 24-01-2011
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The Rise and Fall of Yahoo! (Infographic)
Not a very pretty sight. At one time Yahoo shares were trading at $400+ & then they passed up buying facebook & youtube.
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Links for the week ending 17-01-2011
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Motivational Commencement Address by Marc S. Lewis
How you define & measure success changes over time and this is told very nicely through a bunch of 3 stories.
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Bill Watterson – Kenyon College commencement speech 1990
A pretty motivating speech that inspires you to find your identity & ideals.
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Best Commencement Speeches Quotes and Inspirational Advice : Graduation Wisdom
Pretty useful reference site. Contains a variety of speeches ranging from well known ones like Steve Jobs Stanford address to Bill Watterson’s. Also has a top quotes section.
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Lacking Knowledge Essentials – The Daily WTF
This is what happens when the purchasing department of a company turns out to be even more inept than the vendor’s sales team.
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Don’t Worry, We’ll Fix It! – The Daily WTF
A real classic… Who knew purging data could be so dangerous, that too when you are cross-checking the latest transaction date.
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List of common misconceptions – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Quite a list for sure, and one that is bound to expand. Think of it as a historical snopes.com. Found it all thanks to xkcd – http://xkcd.com/843/
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Myth of the Flat Earth – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
People were not that slow to warm up to the idea of a spherical earth after all. In fact most of the educated people in the middle ages agreed that the earth was round.
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