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Posts tagged Google
Some of the early apps on Google Android
Mar 1st
I was really impressed when I got to see the new iPhone that my friend got from the US. But the Google Android interface totally blew my minds.
With the new Android platform, you cam play regular games like Quake and Counter Strike on the platform. The best thing about this is that its free, its open source and its made for different handsets. So in this case we dont have to depend upon a company that FORCES you to stick on to a mobile service provider of THEIR choice. Watch the video.
Google rumoured to team up with Dell to launch Android powered phone
Feb 5th
I still remember when Android was announced by Google in November, the shares just rose like crazy. One of the fastest growths in the history of Google. But of late its taken a lower end and we are not hearing much about it. Google wanted to show to the world what Android is capable of and would be a really strong competitor to the iPhone.
Just today I was going through one of these articles on the internet and it is rumoured that Google might team up with Dell and the Dell phones would come preloaded with Android. Although Android is under heavy development, it is said that we might be able to have a working model till the end of this year. Dell has been in the PDA business before and it certainly has Know How on how mobile phones are built. Combine Dell’s Hardware expertise and Google’s Engineers and you have a winner at your hands.
All excited about my Numark(did not receive yet)
Feb 2nd
Just today I paid off the credit card bill of about 13 grand something tha tI spent towards the Numark total control and DJIO that I shipped to Rachel. She said she is arriving in Hyd on 26th Feb. I just cant wait anymore. I think I will start taking this practise seriously as well. Its better to doing nothing but drinking.
As a band(DTuned) we have stopped jamming. The others dont find time at all although I have all the time. But I will come up with something and record the guitars, bass solos and drums myself. All that Shoheb will have to do then is sing. This way, I am sure we can come up with an mp3 that is worth distributing to people.
Later we can think about composing some more. But as for now, my music is on a low profile. Buying a house if on a higher priority. The next would be getting a job that pays me at least double of what I am getting now from Google(that is what my market value is). My fingers sucked today when I sat down to play. I feel like selling away all my guitars stuff and sticking to serious DJing,. At least I can make some money on the weekends. All the people who have heard me mixing house and electronic said that it sounded awesome. So I think its time to make some money.
When I get my Numark, I will start a range of videos demonstrating the lessons on Traktor with Numark. I am sure there are quite a few people who would be interested in watching them.
Sri Sailem trip(on a bike)
Feb 2nd
I have been waiting to do something like this from a long time. But finally Ricky who is coordinating the bikers club at Google made it possible. We planned to go to Sri Sailem which is kinda OK distance from Hyd(about 250kms).
We started at about 6am last Saturday and took the highway at about 6:30am. After that it was one of the best rides. Initially as it was early morning and being winter, my hands were frozen. But as the sun rose and things got a lil warmer, it was all worth it. We stopped by a waterfall on the way and spent about 2 hrs there. We ended up taking too many beaks on the way there. Thats the reason we reached there about 4pm.
After reaching there and having lunch, we realized that we had to look for accomadation as the one we booked had been given away as we arrived late. It took us almost 2+ hrs to find a dorm. But one we reached there, got fresh and went to a dhaba outside Sri Sailem.
One the way back, we started a lot later than planed. Thats why we got to drive only about 30 mins with the Sun up. The rest of the time it was pitch dark and to make things worser, it was ghati road. On one occasion I was not about to judge the distance and almost rammed into the railing of a cliff. I was really lucky to slow down in time. If I braked too hard, I would have skid off the road. But apart from this close call, things went pretty fine.
We reached Hyd about 1AM and I had to go the office the next morning. So I rushed back home and went to bed. I so goddamn cold, that I was shivering for the next hour inside my blanket. Thanks to the couple of gulps of whiskey that we had on the way, we were able to stay a lil warm.
Overall I would rate this trip a 8/10 for a first time trip as most of the trip went as planned. We now know how to plan the next trip which might be in mid Feb. I am eagerly waiting for it. If anyone has any suggestion of a place about 350-400 kms from Hyd that is worth riding to on a bike, do let me know.
One of the best Video players I have seen till date
Nov 15th
All this while what I have been looking for in a video playing software is codec support and stability with a lot of features. But just today I came across this WONDERFUL software that adds a whole new definition to what a video player should also do.
This one is called Miro and has been recently released and can be downloaded from http://www.getmiro.com/. The best about this software is that its a complete package fro video lovers. It can play almost any video format from MPG, DivX, 3GP, .MOV and lot more. In addition to this, Miro gives you the option to subscribe to video feeds that services like YouTube and Google Videos offer. So now I no longer have to go to the you tube site to watch a video.
Another awesome feature that Miro has is the ability to download YouTube video to your desktop. Just search up for a video and click on it. The video is downloaded from YouTube to your local hard drive in the .flv format. You can later play this directly from Miro of convert it using some encoder. I have always been looking for good reliable firefox extensions to dowloaded YouTube videos to the local computer but Miro has made it the easiest. And now that YouTube is allowing higher quality video uploads, you can use YouTube as a Video storage and download them back anytime using Miro.
Go Ahead. Give it a try. I am sure you will love it.
My new favourite productivity device.
Nov 7th
Just today I was reading this article on Digg.com where it said that the quicksilver which was only for the mac had become open source and that that source code was available on the Google Code project. I tried to look for a keystroke launcher which was the closest to quicksilver. I have been a Launchy user since a long time, but there were some things that Lunchy could not perform that well. So I did my research and found this wonderful app which comes the closest to quicksilver. This one is called Colibri.
Now the speciality about Colibri is that it allows you to do several tasks like increase your volume or control your system preferences also. Colibri also allows you to change your hotkey assignment to launch it. Now I use Ctrl+Space to launch Colibri. This way I can still use the Title bar menu of the active app.
This little thing can be downloaded from http://colibri.leetspeak.org/
Control Volume of your computer :-
Change the hotkey control :-
A whole lotta preferences that can be customized :-
Download it and give it a try and let me know what you think about it.
gBox, a competition to iTunes Music Store
Aug 15th
This news is something that really is a good move by some company to put an end to the iTunes Music Store domination. I was reading this news article today that Universal is teaming up with Google to release a service called gBox which is a music store just like iTMS but will sell DRM-free music for much lesser price. iTMS charges about $1.29 for a single track and these are DRM protected. DRM protected means that you cannot play them on any other music player other than iPod. Not even using another software on your computer. Now that is what sucks. When the DRM protection is removed, the track can be played on any other music player or using a media playing software. gBox will make this more easy by offering the tracks at only $0.99 which almost 30 cents cheaper to iTMS.
Google’s involvement with gBox and UMG’s DRM-free experiment looks sinister enough many observers believe gBox will pose a direct threat to the iTMS. But when you get down to it, Google’s participation may simply be what it does best: search and making oodles of money from AdSense.
Now how does gBox fit into the Google model? Simple search and make money out of text ads. Its as simple as that. Its not that we are pissing off Steve Jobs, just that we are grabbing a portion of the market which is still a virgin.
Facts about me(I am my own role model)
Aug 8th
Some of the facts that make me feel. This is called having a great image of yourself within you.
* There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures I allowed to live.
* Outer space exists because it’s afraid to be on the same planet with me.
* I counted to infinity – twice.
* When do a pushup, I am not lifting myself up, I am pushing the Earth down.
* I am is so fast, I can run around the world and punch myself in the back of the head.
* I don’t wear a watch, I decide what time it is. (LOL)
* I gave Mona Lisa that smile.
* I can slam a revolving door.
* There are no races, only countries of people I have beaten to different shades of black and blue.
* My house has no doors, only walls that I walks through.
* I can divide by zero.
* Newton’s Third Law is wrong: Although it states that for each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,
there is no force equal in reaction to my turnaround kick.
* When taking the GRE, write “Nikhil” for every answer. You will score over 1600.
* I have 12 moons. One of those moons is the Earth.
* I grind my coffee with my teeth and boil the water with my rage.
* Archeologists unearthed an old English dictionary dating back to the year 1236. It defined “victim” as “one who has encountered Nikhil Dev”
* If you Google search “Nikhil Dev getting kicked” you will generate zero results. It just doesn’t happen.
* I can drink an entire gallon of milk in thirty-seven seconds.
* I don’t bowl strikes, I just knock down one pin and the other nine faint.
* It takes me 20 minutes to watch 60 Minutes.
* The Bermuda Triangle used to be the Bermuda Square, until I kicked one of the corners off.
* There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I live in Hyderabad.
* I once ate an entire bottle of sleeping pills. They made me blink.
* James Cameron wanted Me to play the Terminator. However, upon reflection, he realized that would have turned his movie into a documentary, so he went with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
* Thousands of years ago I came across a bear. It was so terrified that it fled north into the arctic. It was also so terrified that all of its decedents now have white hair.
A beginners guide to using the mighty Terminal
Aug 8th
When I started working on Linux(Ubuntu) for the very first time, I had no idea of how powerful the terminal was and above all what to type in there. But over the years, I have learnt quite some with the help of friends and resources. I thought if there was some doc which would give people a good idea of all the necessary commands, it would be great. So did some searching on Google and found this really nice PDF from fosswire.com which shows the mostly used ones on Unix. Its a must download –> Unix Reference.
Do let me know if anyone wants other such resources as I do have quite a few of them which are available for free and they are a great source of learning.
1981 and still counting
Jul 8th
Its been quite some time and I have totally forgotten to read my subscribed feeds. I had install Google gears on my laptop a couple of weeks back and was too lazy to sync then. just today synced then now I am surprised to know that I have just about 1981 feeds to read
now the fund part is that Google gears allows you to have just 2000 posts, at first I had though that I could never read that limit. But looks like the days is not too far.
For all you people who want to know more about what Google gears is all about, here is a small description from my side.
To read any feed, you always need to be online. Google as taken a step ahead and made the feeds available online. All you need to do is get onto a windows machine, go to the google reader website where you have subscribed to all your feeds. You have instructions on how to install the gears appliance on your machine. Install that and bookmark you Google reader link. After you have restarted your firefox, you have a down pointing arrow. Clicking on that will download all the unread posts to your machine. Now you can use the bookmarked url to read those posts even when you are offline. The next time you connect to the internet, the arrow would be pointing upwards. clicking on that will upload all the changes to the feeds like the read ones to the reader server and arrow will turn t down pointing again so that you can download the new feeds. now how much more easier can this get. I think I will be able to read more posts now.
Give it a try
