The iPad post

This is not exactly another one of those reviews of the iPad, an unboxing photo gallery or even a real iPad mandatory post . And, this is a very boring text only post. Be advised that it is boring to read a text only post. Go here for a more interesting mandatory post on the iPad, atleast it's got a photo in there! This is a post for all those people who really don't need an iPad, or atleast think so. They always say that a product so good that it can develop a need, is sure to be successful. I really don't sit at my desk and use my computer anymore. Instead I take the laptop around or my mobile phone's always around for me to be online 24x7. I look at the iPad to replace internet access on my mobile phone at home, and on my netbook at home. There are times when I don't want to boot up my computer just to search for something on Google.  Of course, I use the hibernate mode to minimize time taken to get to my desktop on my netbook, But its still not fast enough when I want to search on wikipedia for a movie I'm watching, or for a book I'm reading or a game I might be playing. Or I just wanted to check that mail I had been waiting for. A Technology so sufficiently disguised that you don't realize that you are using it. An iPad would fit the bill perfectly. I just pick it up, search for what I was looking for and put it down. An iPad creates/extends the market for tablet devices. Because, if Apple sells something, they create a market for it. Even if noone needs it in the first place. Why should I get a iPad instead of a  tablet PC? An iPad is much more closer to a mobile phone than a computer in many ways. By not supporting multitasking,  the iPad actually lets you be more productive and focused on the task at hand. The App store is a big enough reason by itself for wanting to get the iPad. Any device is only powerful as the application that runs on it and you have a huge library of powerful apps at your disposal with the iPad. It is true that other tablet PCs have OSes which actually support millions of applications. These applications are more suited to your computer, not for a mobile phone. Does an iPad replace the mobile phone? Its not really replacing your mobile phone. But it's just replacing your mobile phone at home as an internet device, a gaming device, an email client, a YouTube viewer and lots more. One, its got a big screen which is meant to let you do all without squinting at the tiny screen, or scrolling around for 10 minutes for every 5 lines that you read. The iPad might not let you make phone calls or type out entire documents or work on long excel sheets at work. Why should it replace your laptop/PC? The iPad is meant to be used as an device when you really don't want to boot up your computer or are just plain too lazy to walk up to get to it. One day, the iPad might actually replace your laptop/PC/netbook. Hook up a keyboard and it is ready to do that even sooner. If it can replace your ebook reader, double up as your youtube viewer, check your emails, access social networking sites and much more, then its almost ready to replace a normal internet user. But you still need your PC/netbook/laptop for heavy duty stuff. You'd still need it to write that last bit of code, or touch up on that photo with the full potential of the desktop Photoshop. You cannot access your command line on it, look at files and folders stored on it and its pretty much stuck with the same OS for life (Yes, it would get updates, but the OS is still the same) And as with all Apple products, No Flash! I don't see it replacing my laptop soon. But I really need the iPad just so that I could use it as....an iPad. But what do I really use flash for? A few rare websites, and of course Youtube. But iPad has a dedicated player for Youtube, so that irons out the "flashy" problem. Why did I write this post? Because everybody's writing about it. Because if I don't, I might not be allowed to blog anymore. No tech blog is complete without a post on the iPad. It's the most important invention after personal computers. And it's been long since I've spent so much time typing out such a lengthy post. A post on the iPad most probably needs a photo of it to break the monotony. But I thought I might as well put up a link to do just that! This post is not really complete. But I had to put it up because there's another post which needs to come up real fast. Subscribe to the RSS feed, or just keep visiting until the post comes up.

Aardvark - answers to all your questions

We live in an age where we need to Google everything and anything we need to know about. But Google is after all an index of all that lies on the internet. What if you wanted to buy something and didn’t really know where to look for? The internet might be able to help you but its usually not that helpful. Asking your friends might be really helpful, but what if your friends didn’t know either? Most probably, their friends might know. Aardvark does just this. It creates a network of friends and their friends across which you throw around your questions and delivers their answers to you. It’s a bridge between the person asking the question and those who have the answers. It involves extensive usage of the friend of a friend (FOAF) concept which is currently one of biggest trends in social networking. LinkedIn and Facebook already show you friend recommendations based on this concept. But Aardvark has been the first to put it to use in answering your questions. You sign up for a free account with aardvark and then add your personal details(so that your friends can find you) and your topics of interest. Linking it to your Facebook account lets you import your interests from your FB profile. Add aardvark bot to your IM client and you are good to go. Questions on topics of your interest could flow to you and you are free to, answer, pass or refer them to your friends. The conversation happens freely through IM, with the Aardvark bot ensuring that you always know what keyword to type in.  Your dashboard on Aardvark has a list of all your questions and answers, asked and answered. If IN is not your thing, you can even ask questions and answer them on the site or via Twitter. Time required to get answers is around 4 minutes usually, But then it all depends on the question. Many questions might remain unanswered, but most objective questions are answered promptly. Aardvark would do well to bring in a reward system of badges similar to the one found on Stack overflow.  Your questions are not always recognized as questions and you might be required to tag them or rephrase them if Aardvark doesn’t understand them. In spite of these trivial issues, Aardvark is a service which shows tremendous promise and is a must have bot for your IM client. Thanks to @kushmakarsharma for recommending the site.

Dropbox support for Mobile devices

Have been using Dropbox quite sometime and it keeps my files in sync on the web and all across my computers. Read more about Dropbox here Dropbox adds support for mobile devices as well. If you visit the website from any mobile phone, you are redirected to the mobile version of the site, which lets you download your files to your mobile phone. I tried it out on my Nokia N97 and it even lets you update files onto your dropbox online folder (Just choose the normal version over the Mobile version on the page and upload using the basic uploader).  Signup for Dropbox to sync across all your devices.

Dropbox running on my Nokia N97 The Dropbox already supports the Iphone with its native Iphone app which lets you sync files with your iphone as well.

Why do I need a browser?

It was this review for the opera 10 browser that made me think about it. Thanks to the proliferation of apis, desktop and mobile applications which have made my devices completely internet enabled devices, I now wonder what I would the browser for.

1. I check my email. But I can check that using IMAP on my mobile phone or via Thunderbird on my desktop.
2. Facebook. I get an email notification, that's when I need to check the facebook page. I have the facebook app on my mobile, which does quite a decent job, and even Gravity supports fb. I don't use seesmic, so on my laptop, I need to use the browser.
3. News that which twitter hasn't delivered, I need a browser for. Of course I could use RSS feeds, but I find that most of the RSS feeds for newspapers pretty much crowd up my reader with several items which will remain unread forever. So I do need a browser, or I could just read the newspaper!
4. Twitter. Gravity on my phone and Destroy twitter on my laptop.
5. Reference. Most of my reference is when I don't exactly have access to a laptop or don't have time to get to it. Which means, my mobile search tool is what I use for reference. It still uses the default browser on my mobile though.
6. Google reader. Gravity does a decent job, but I still would like to see images and links on my mobile phone. Now this is something I definitely need a browser for.
7. Blogging. Thanks to posterous, all I now need to do is to send an email and I have a blog post.

My laptop is all about the browser. In fact, the browser is on the startup application list. So if I don't need the browser, I don't need the laptop? After writing this post I realized that Gravity for S60 is becoming a really important application in my mobile arsenal. I have tried to take an extreme view of certain sites in here. You must've noticed that I still need a browser for many tasks, but the point is that I'm soon beginning to see myself using my mobile more than my laptop, and my applications more than the browser.  Now if only my mobile phone had more screen real estate and a bigger keyboard.

Face recognition to login to your PC- Banana screen

Even though face recognition is not as popular as other biometric means of security such as fingerprint recognition, it still is a powerful and easy to use way to increase your security. Banana screen lets you harness the facial recognition to login to your PC without typing in your password.

Being used to a biometric fingerprint scanner on both my work and home laptops, I was disappointed when I started using my ASUS netbook. I had to think of an alternate way to login without typing in passwords. Searching online gave me results on only one application, Banana screen from Banana Security. But even lifehacker’s links weren’t alive since Banana security’s website had nothing on it, let alone a download link. After a bit more googling, I found a link to a Banana screen download at Softpedia.

Banana screen requires that you enter the windows password before the first time you use it. After installation, you create a profile of yourself called a model. The Model is a webcam capture of your face which allows you to login. I would have liked BS to completely replace the windows login screen, but BS only creates an alternate windows lock screen (Alt + L). Every time it fails to recognize (the first few times, since it needs to adapt the model to different lighting environments) you’d have to enter your password to login. And it updates the model. It learns!!

One tip would be to set the camera timeout to a low value on the settings. That way the camera doesn’t stay on for long. To login, press shift to activate the camera, and lo, access granted!! If you enjoyed the application, leave a comment..

Life size Gundam

The ultimate technology in fictional robotic technology, Gundam now hovers over the City of Tokyo. Gundam is a futuristic robotic warrior anime character who was immortalized by several TV series, movies, video games and anime series.
The Gundam is a huge metal suit which human pilots can wield from their cockpits inside them.

You can watch the video of the Giant robot below.

Firefox 3.5 is out. Time for an upgrade!

The latest version of your Firefox is now out! I've been using firefox ever since it was pheonix and I never had complaints. So I guess I wouldn't come up with any right now! Firefox 3.5 makes browsing faster. And adds a lot of minor/major functionality tweaks. Makes the awesome bar, even more awesome, and Introduces private browsing at last. But you could wait until all your extensions get upgraded. But most developers have already updated their extensions and you shouldn't be surprised if most of your popular extensions would move up the upgrade ladder without much trouble. Site rendering &performance has improved a lot. Read all about their performance upgrades here! Go here for a complete list of top features. Click on help > Check for updates on your firefox browser. Or use the link below.

Posterous - Use your email to post online

Posted via email from thunderror's posterous

Use Open Source Titanium to build your RIAs

Appcelerator's Titanium is an open source alternative to Adobe AIR to help you build your rich internet apps easily. We first saw Titanium hit the racks of the internet around December. Its three months down the line and at least we think they haven't made the noise they ought to have generated. But we haven't seen as much of Titanium as we should be? There are a few easy things which Appcelerator hasn't done yet. And correct us if we're wrong.

1. Average branding. Titanium is a great brand name, but my search on Titanium on Google brings up only one result on the first page which is relevant. Titanium Appcelerator seems to work though!
2. This is something Appcelerator has to do. Write a Wikipedia page. It is after all an open source project which needs users for it to get popular.
3. Get more people to tweet and write about it. We decided to blog about it after getting impressed with the free SDK, awesome tutorials and the wonderful twitter application, Tweetanium.
4. Get more blogs to write about Titanium. Because we really think Lifehacker should have featured Tweetanium. True many have already featured Titanium, like the Readwriteweb blog

The Titanium App is open source and cross platform.  Preview release 2 is now out and adds support to Linux as well. We think open source is the way to go and Titanium is a step in the right direction. Download the Titanium SDK here and start making your own apps. Show your support to Titanium by downloading Tweetanium Follow them here Do you disagree with the statement that Titanium has branded itself the way it was supposed to? Do you think Titanium has already got its share of fame for the period of time it has been around? Would you be willing to give up on AIR and go open source? Leave your comments!

TALE OF A MOBILE BLOGGER

Posted from a mobile phone: This post is to commemorate the success of mobile royale, the completely mobile maintained blog. I came across his blog through one of my google reader entries. You can read his account here. All the more appreciable is his effort considering that it is hosted on a free domain name and attempts to keep it alive inspite of the tough times. My passion for mobile tech has ensured that I read most blogs relevant to the subject..Is it possible to completely eliminate the use of computers? After all, what you have in your pocket is not one thing. It is manthis post comes from my mobile phone as well. from my trusty e66. I use the Wordpress mobile plugin to make blogposts from my mobile phone. The plugin barely does its job if you ask me. It is good enough to provide a mobile interface for your blog but not for making blog entries from your mobile phone. Which is why, I had to complete this blog post from my PC, since the plugin kept moving the cursor around and didn't even let me complete the blog post. Yeah! I said trusty e66 and a not so trustworthy plugin. Try out ready.mobi to check whether your blog is truly mobile web ready!