Nikhil Dev

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.