google

Jan 12, 2012

A Long-Time Apple Nerd’s Review of the Galaxy Nexus and First Experience With Android

To those who want to use Android, I say go for it. I don’t think that choice is wrong — there are many fine things about the Android OS and many things it does differently and better than iOS. I can understand how tech-savvy power-users who know what they are getting into would like Android. For them, the trade-offs in certain areas are a welcome sacrifice in exchange for the customizability, the different look, and the plethora of hardware devices to choose from.

via A Long-Time Apple Nerd’s Review of the Galaxy Nexus and First Experience With Android — Shawn Blanc.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Android summed up. It’s not that I wouldn’t recommend an Android phone to your mum or dad, it’s just that I wouldn’t recommend an Android phone to your mum or dad.

For those that actually like the appeal of Android, by all means, you’re more than welcome to. Hell, even I like certain aspects about Android, but that doesn’t make it the comparative “best”.

Qualifiers such as “are they buying based solely on price?” aren’t even all that relevant to buying an Android phone, as a second-hand 3GS or similar might be more suitable instead. I’d think long and hard before recommending an Android phone to anyone.

One other thing: I’m super glad I don’t work in a telco store that sells Android alongside the iPhone, because I doubt I’d be able to “sell” Android phones based on one feature alone. I mean, Google integration, absolutely. But iOS has that in iCloud. IOS is comparatively easier to sell; do your friends have iPhones? Boom, free messages between you and them. That feature alone could sell a customer, never mind an app for anything you could poke a stick at.

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Oct 4, 2011

Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner with Android — Part Deux

 

In my previous post in the series, I detailed a few of the more user-facing things about Android, like app management, music syncing, and so on. In this post, I intend to talk more about some of the finer points of things like text selection, general usability, and finally wrap it up at the end with a few choice sentences about Android as a whole and how it compares to other mobile platforms. If the previous post was about a 3 (not quite computer illiterate and yet not quite your average nerd) on the Benny Ling official scale of nerdery, this post is about a 6 or a 7 (getting up there). Not to mention it’s fairly long… You have been warned!

You want to talk about fragmentation? Okay, let’s talk about fragmentation. Fragmentation isn’t an issue. Geeks like us might like to harp on the fact that everything (apps-wise) doesn’t run on, everything (hardware-wise), or that some apps are restricted to certain regions, or that different versions run on different devices, but the fact of the matter is, fragmentation isn’t an issue for most end users. I say “most”, because if you’re one of the unlucky few who has chosen either the cheapest Android phone you could find, or somehow gotten stuck with a manufacturer notorious for releasing updates very slowly, or even worse, not at all, then, then, fragmentation might be an issue. You can hardly blame Google for your fragmentation issues though, as it’s up to manufacturers to release updates for their phones, which also makes it super-easy for them to drop support in way of software updates for a particular phone. Exactly why I would only ever buy an Android phone either from the Nexus series (as you’re guaranteed software updates, it being the flagship Android phone at any given time)), or from HTC, or any of the other big players (Samsung just manages to sneak in here) — any other manufacturer is a crapshoot. I mean, sure you can put the latest ROM or whatever from XDA Developers on your Motorola Milestone, but do you really want to learn about bootloaders, custom restore images, and all that kind of stuff? Perhaps if you’re a geek, otherwise, probably not.

First seen in iOS, there’s a rather nice visual feedback effect to let you know when you have reached the end of a long list, or scrolled to the bottom of a webpage. The UI “bounces” to let you know there’s no more content, the scrollbar appears for a second to do the same, and you can go about your merry business. Android 2.3 brings a similar sort of effect, only instead of a UI bounce, you see a nice flash or orange whenever you reach the end of a scrollable section. It’s pretty nicely done — as you drag more and more away from the edge, you get more and more visual feedback (but only the very edge is tinted with orange, the rest is a semi-transparent white that builds upon the orange effect).

The funny thing is, I can only think of the Windows Phone 7 accent colour whenever I see these orange flashes. Orange is a good colour choice as it manages to stand out against pretty much everything, but it would have been nice if we had a choice of colours to choose from; I’m guessing that their particular implementation of this kinda of visual feedback means that basically any colour will be visible against the background. As it stands, the orange is used lots of other places, too — like when the spacebar can autocorrect a word for you, there’s a orange line that appears on it (more on text entry a little later), and even punctuation keys and suggested words use this orange colour. It’s not bad, but it could have been better. Read More

Sep 20, 2011

Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner With Android

There’s this little blog called My Dinner With Android that received some media attention a few months or so ago, and it attempts to detail one iOS user’s journey with the Nexus S. This post is where I will attempt to do the same, with a few exceptions: his previous smartphone is an iPhone 3GS, my previous smartphone is an iPhone 4. He is from the US, I am from Australia. Everything else is fairly similar. For the sake of your sanity and length, this will be yet another two-parter — the first part, this part, will focus more on Android as something to live with every day, with a few comparisons to iOS and WP7 along the way. The second, more ranty part, will probably be about how much I hate Android and all of its crazy user interaction methods — either that, or a few more details on things I’ve said here, as well as more critical look at Android as a smartphone platform and an Apple iOS competitor.

Yes, I’ve done it again. Changed smartphone platforms, at least temporarily. After my experiments with WP7 I figured I had to give Android another go, a more serious one this time. Like I said, Android is my poison of choice this time around, and the Nexus S is the chalice from which I drink. I realised my previous attempt at Android was little more than a ranting tirade about everything that was wrong about the platform, so this time around I’m going to take a more objective view.

First, the hardware. So, what is the Nexus S like? It’s alright. Not fantastic like the aluminium-and-glass of the iPhone 4, but still alright. Plastic feels somewhat cheap, but overall the whole kit is passable. The most defining feature of the Nexus S is that the front glass is curved – people have said that the inwardly-curved front glass fits better against the face when you’re on a call, and it does. Oh, and the screen is a little larger than what I’m normally used to, which, when combined with the hardware navigation keys (back, menu, home) means that apps have a little more breathing room.

Read More

Apr 28, 2010

Add Sites to Google Reader with Just One Click

1. Head to Google Reader and click Settings, Reader settings.

2. Click the Goodies tab, then scroll down until you see Subscribe as you surf.

3. Drag the Subscribe… link to your browser's bookmarks/favorites bar.

That’s all there is to it! When you click the bookmarklet (so named because it’s a bookmark that performs a special function, rather than just directing you to a page), you’ll be taken straight to Google Reader. There you’ll see a few key stats about the feed (such as average number of posts per week) and a Subscribe button you click to complete the process.

via Add Sites to Google Reader with Just One Click Bookmarklet – Marklets.com.

Way, way, WAYYYY better than the current dance I’ve been doing:

  1. See if the site I want to subscribe to has a link to it’s RSS feed on the page somewhere.
  2. If it does, click the link that takes me to the RSS page.
  3. Copy the RSS URL.
  4. Switch to Google Reader (I run a separate Fluid instance of Reader as an Single-Site-Browser).
  5. Hit “a” (the keyboard shortcut for adding a subscription).
  6. Paste in the RSS URL.
  7. Hit “enter”.

The process is about 1,000,000 times worse if the site in question doesn’t have an easily-visible RSS link:

  1. Copy the site’s URL.
  2. Open Firefox (Chrome, as far as I can tell, doesn’t allow me to easily access the RSS feed).
  3. Paste in the site’s URL.
  4. Click the RSS icon in the location bar, which takes me to the RSS page.
  5. Copy the RSS URL.
  6. Switch to Google Reader.
  7. Hit “a”.
  8. Paste in the RSS URL.
  9. Hit “enter”.

A couple of additional steps, but you can see how it was an convoluted solution for a simple problem.

I do love bookmarklets.

Mar 8, 2010

Google Facts and Figures

google

via Twitpic – Share photos on Twitter.

Not sure how up-to-date this information is (then again, it does include Android data), but it certainly makes for interesting reading.

Mar 3, 2010

Is Tasmania the Google Street View black hole?

ridgeway road
We’ve seen plenty of Street View anomalies in the past, many of which originated from Tasmania. But none of them are as as pervasive as Ridgeway Road.

It kind of looks like you’re looking up at the stars, with a perverted Xbox 360 logo on one half of the camera. And it just seems to go on and on.

via Is Tasmania The Google Street View Black Hole | Gizmodo Australia.

Bonus image:

devonport

Feb 11, 2010

Google Buzz

Start conversations about the things you find interesting. Share updates, photos, videos, and more. http://buzz.google.com

via YouTube – Google Buzz.

Jan 20, 2010

Google Android Personal Thoughts /via Boy Genius Report

Other issues that I can’t live with day to day? How do I copy text from non-editable field like an email, webpage, or SMS, or even a 3rd party application? Oh, I can’t. Say what you want about the iPhone not having copy and paste for two years — a joke — it’s the single best implementation on the planet for a smartphone and Google’s approach is almost as bad as RIM’s with the Storm-series.

via Google Android Personal Thoughts « Boy Genius Report.

Apr 13, 2009

The World’s Inventory Of Lulz

The world’s inventory of lols, according to Google.

No matches were found for 100 lolols, effectively disproving the existence of the loololol. The internet contains 2,050,000 lulz. At no point is equilolbrium reached.

via LOL – Boing Boing Gadgets.

LOL.

Apr 11, 2009

Google Latitude Stunt

YouTube – Google Latitude Stunt.

Impressive, Google. Very impressive indeed.

Feb 12, 2009

7 Links I Know You’ll Enjoy

Continuing with the theme somewhat, here are 7 links I know you’ll enjoy. I’ve put them here for your satisfaction, but really, they’re just here so I can get them out of my webbrowser and make room for more news that I missed out on. I’m under 2000 RSS items (I started at 4000), so progress is being made! Enjoy.

So, in the list we have:

  • Dynomighty Mighty Wallets
    These things rock. I already own a tri-fold dot-matrix wallet which gets questioned frequently in public, and to stand out more, I’m going to get some more. They make great gifts, but really – if the Australian dollar wasn’t so sucky at the moment, I’d buy them in  a heartbeat. They’ll have to wait, however.
  • Glow Grafitti
    I’m no grafitti artist, but glow in the dark spray paint? That’s like any childhood dream! I found this on the internet – thanks Boing Boing Gadgets – a while ago, lost the link, but then found it again, so here it is for posterity. There’s probably nothing cooler than glow in the dark grafitti. Again – a little exxy at $59 a can, and when you convert that into Aussie dollars, well, it hurts.
  • Uma Doodlebook Frame
    A tradition photo frame (read: non-digital) with a twist – you can create your own borders simply by drawing them. It’s got 80 pages, so you can create up to 80 custom borders for any of your pictures. Again, how cool is that? I rekon I’ll just stick one photo in it, and then use it as a scratchpad for notes and stuff.
  • iTunes Music Store – the web version
    Yeah – again, props to df.net for this one – this one’s cool. It’s essentially a webbrowser-based version of the iTunes store. It’s a pretty good rendition of the actual store, but you need to open itunes to buy stuff from it anyway, so yeah. Handy if you don’t have iTunes on your current computer, or need to browse something quickly at the library or whatever.
  • Windows Shutdown Crapfest
    I had no idea Windows developement was this convoluted. It’s actually amazing that they manage to ship products at all, considering that they’re “the left hand cannot see what the right hand is doing” approach with regards to all their code. No wonder Vista was so bad – here’s to Windows 7, the start (hopefully) of a new era in Microsoft computing.

Update – here’s your seventh link, folks.

  • Palm, Google, and Apple

    Unlike Siegler, I think the large number of recent Apple employees now working at Palm on the Pre suggests that the relationship between the two companies is cold — ice cold. What I heard last month at Macworld Expo is that Palm has a standing offer for engineers at Apple to jump ship, with a starting salary of 1.5 times their current Apple salary.

When you’re done perusing the links – give us your comments below, yeah?

Feb 10, 2009

Using the Earth as a hard drive?

Where Google gets all that Gmail hard drive space.

★ The Joy of Tech! ★.

…and somehow, it’s probably possible within the next decade or so.

From Boing Boing Gadgets:

BLDGBLOG does some fascinating navel gazing on the subject of hard drive storage on the planetary scale: if ferromagnetically charged minerals can be arranged to make hard drives, what’s stopping us from turning Earth into one giant binary storage capsule, short of the technology?

I kid you not. In years to come – we might be using the earth as our hard drive. I’m not talking about terabytes here, not even petabytes – nope, if we used the earth as our hard drive, I couldn’t even begin to imagine the amount of data a hard drive of that size would hold.

If a 1.8″ drive can hold a quarter of a gigabyte, then the earth, measuring 6371km in diameter, would hold a hell of a lot more – obviously.

Good luck with those seek times, though. You random access times would be shot to pieces (unless you had heads that travelled at the speed of light). :P

Cool, huh?

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