Android/Incredible - Almost a Month Now

Well - I had followed the HTC Incredible hype since Dec 2009. So, when Verizon finally confirmed it, I just could not wait any longer. I had to jump to the offer. Here's is a review almost after a month of usage.

It is an Ultimate Phone with the Best & Most Open Mobile OS out there.

1. Home Screens

The Live Wall Papers and Personalization is wonderful. 7 Home Screens is just awesome. I hope app developers do keep in mind that Android is perhaps the best platform for Personalization & Customization. So, if there is any possibility to add Shortcuts or Widgets, they should invest time in doing the same.

2. Apps

Well, of course it does not have a zillion apps like iphone - but pretty much all the good ones have been "ported". There are some nifty ones which do not exist on iphone like the Newsroom or Google Navigation/Listen (I mean all the Google Brand). This phone runs like 30 apps any time. Just go to Usage and you will see the battery draining out with all the apps. But I love running all of them together - its like having a laptop in your hand. Why wouldn't you multitask?

3. Social Integration*

Facebook & Twitter Integration is awesome. It quickly recognizes your contacts and spits out the links to create a wholesome appeal to your contact list. It integrates facebook/twitter etc to create that individual so that you don't have to look at 5 different apps.

*I thought of calling it Facebook Integration coz today Facebook is virtually the Society.

4. Google Voice

I am yet to use this one properly. Its acting as my default Voicemail as of now. The more I read about it the more I get intrigued. It is just an awesome way to customize your usage of phone.

5. My Useful Apps - Checkout the Video

Newsroom - You have to get this one. It's perhaps the best one out there. Its like 36 sources pulling in beautifully formatted news for you. Of course, it cannot beat the way NY Times looks. But, it does it for 36 sources not just NY Times. And NY Times does not provide any customization either. Here in matter of seconds I can refresh the entire room. Some mentions - CNN, BBC, WSJ, Business Week, Google News, ESPN, TOI, NY Times, Engadget, Boing Boing etc.

Navigation - You simply don't need a GPS. I am going to beat the hell out of this app once I am back from India. Heard a lot about it and seems pretty useful.

Dolphin HD - So my iphone friend does not like the Stock Browser and dismisses the complete Incredible. Well, unfortunately the case with Apple is that if you build in something competing with the stock one, Apple kills it. Not in the Android World. That's how Firefox brings in Fennec. Opera bring Mini (well there was great hullaballoo over approving it on iphone in first place). Still, Dolphin HD is like the best browser currently. It uses the entire 3.7" to its disposal and runs awesome. Screen rendering is crisp. iphone users do not like the fact the the letters are small. Well, thats the customization again - I like to see the full page.

Skype - This is the deal breaker though it is recently been "ported" to iphone. Haha. Verizon is the shrewdest carrier to bring in all the nifty features. Skype is so deeply integrated along with multitasking, that you can't tell whether you are getting a call on Skype or Network. Its awesome to keep in touch with my Parents anytime anywhere (except for the subway/path).

NFL Mobile - Alert for *God* level Material

I don't know what Verizon had to do to get this on its App list. But it ****streams**** live NFL Channel to your phone on 3G. Let me tell you - it runs about 1-2 sec lag than actual TV but it is awesome beyond words. You can see every touchdown of Tim Tebow happenning when you are staying late in office or hanging out in some bar which is playing the oldies baseball.

So, there are a lot of more apps. I spend most of my morning and evening time reading Newsroom/Newsrob and listening to Google Listen. I believe this phone is more than apps.

6. Launcher

My iphone friends have no idea what I am talking about here; but then Apple never promised them anything like that. They give you one and you have to accept it. Moreorless it is like 80% satisfying. I tried LauncherPro on Incredible but I had to lose out the HTC Widgets. Launcher Pro is awesome if you like the 3D feel of Nexus One. But I have so much customization in place that the transition between Sense UI and Launcher Pro is not seamless. I enjoy using Sense and have stuck to it. Well, I keep changing the Live Wallpapers :) Try out NexusMod and Flying Android.

Ultimately - The winner is Verizon.

My monthly (thanks to some Corporate Discount) should be around $64 and that "includes" taxes. My data usage after a month was more than 2GB. And I *do not* connect to wifi coz Verizon is supposedly the best carrier out there for 3G. Oh, I did not mention about the 8Mpx Camera. This phone stands to its name. I am attaching a video herewith - all shots taken by my Incredible. I have not learnt use the flash etc, still it's pretty good. Enjoy in Youtube HD.

ps: For making the Videos, I used iMovie on my Mac. Shots were captured using USB Debugging. Checkout this page http://theappslab.com/2010/06/01/how-to-take-a-screenshot-in-android/. All Videos are in HD. Its 514am in the morning now.

What a play! Big Respect!

This post will be short.

I would ask you all to go and definitely watch the play titled "The Blue Mug". Awesome performance by the entire team. Its about all those childhood memories you had and would want someone to narrate you back. Its hilarious and makes you take a journey down those murky memory lanes of the past. The group is on a world tour and its advisable you book your tickets as soon they become available. We got a $75 one (I guess) and we were like 8 rows from the stage. Great experience as this was the first time I watched a play.

Running Chrome OS

(My ramblings as I wandered off to the Chrome OS era)

Well, hmm now I think thats not entirely true. I would have wanted it to run on Dell Vostro 1500. I had to steal someone else's :). There were hiccups. Any OSS usually needs bit of effort to make it run/usable. When google launched Chrome OS last year, I immediately went to the website to see if an image is available. Google never shared the image - instead gave a list of steps to build the source on Ubuntu. They were tedious and my Dell Vostro was almost dead. I still wanted to give it a shot (long shot of course) but was preoccupied with work. And then I bought a Macbook Pro on Thanksgiving. It has been just a fantastic platform and hats off to Apple to pull in such masterpieces every time.

One of my friend recently mentioned that his laptop is not running for the last year. The reason was something related to OS as he mentions. I already had Opensuse on the USB which I sometime used when I felt like working on Linux. My Windows is breathing its last due to bad virus issues. That gave me the motivation to finally search for Chrome OS image again. I got the resource here. Well, thanks to my windows laptop I ended up downloading the image for some 3-4 times and the worst case was it went till 200 MB and stopped. Mac to rescue. The whole distro is 327MB - so your wireless has to hold and not get disconnected (My Dell Vostro does). So, once I completed the transfer and image burning on my USB - with bated breath I tried to boot it up.

It didn't. Black screen all over. Complete let down. What to do now. I read some more. May be the md5 is wrong and file is corrupt. May be I did not format the USB properly. My search hit this page next (see the parent wiki page too; lot of info). Dell Vostro 1500 - Does not boot. Then there were few comments about Flow and Zero (builds). The next thing I saw was there were listings for Apple.

There were 2 reasons why I did not want to try it on my Mac. First - its Mac. Its pristine. Its still a virgin and I have not fiddled with it like I do with my windows/linux. The other problem was that I need to burn a separate image for the Mac (I guess) coz of the hardware differences. That would have taken some time to start the entire process again.

Solution - I saw in the list that HP works. It had like Y Y Y Y everywhere. Thats it. I know somebody who has a HP laptop. Its like my Dell Laptop - almost dead. But I had to try once. Thanks Rohan - I had to reboot your laptop to experiment this one.

Well, well. Initial start 22 seconds for the first (Google had 7 on its demo, hence there is no image available from Google. I guess the time is something which can be played around with). I am counting this from the moment I press the button. In 22 seconds you are on login screen. This time reduced to 15 in the next 4-5 boots. And its simple to use. Chrome Browser is amazingly (read lightning) fast & it feels light. The build version is of 20100213 0.5.31. It shows another version 6.0.321.0 which looks like the Chrome Browser version but I need to google further to verify that.

I could not find few important features like pinning & app area. But Ctrl-Alt-T brings to the familiar console and then the world is yours. This is perfect for Netbooks - there is no question about it. There are nifty UI tricks which are eye-candy. I don't have any screenshots coz I did not find the print screen feature (well thats something which might be useful to report bugs). Had I been running VmWare or VirtualBox, I could have posted few images. So task in hand is to get an external HDD and download all necessary stuff from my Windows BOX (>30G of my class lectures) and kill it. I mean put in something better (Linux for now).

Okay, thats it for now. Till Rohan is not in - I can decimate some more of his laptop functionality and do some cooking. Its good to see that I finally could get this one done. My plans to watch "Kick Ass" did not work out, but I can say the evening was worthwhile and Chromium is a kick-ass OS.

The iPad

iPad will be going on sale in less than a month now. It's available for pre-order and the more I see it, the more I end up deciding to get one for my Parents (Of course that includes some months of free usage by me before I send it over). The best thing which I found out about it is that as the apps you download is through iTunes library - your apps can be downloaded directly from there for iPad as well. This hence means that if you have an iPhone (which I plan to get in a few months - wish Mr. Jobs speaks about the mysterious OS 4.0) and get the iPad - the apps will be virtually in sync. The problem now is when I send the device over to India - what happens when I buy new apps. Of course the iTunes installations will be different and I believe it will recognize the folly. But is there a way around this?

I did my bit of research on phones - while I believe that HTC phones are way better than the iPhone and are a good device to be bought by any tech-savvy person, its not yet mature. Neither do I have enough money to have 2 phones like all those youtube posters who have bought both iPhone and Nexus One on the first day. Regardless, the only problem with HTC phones is the radiation level. While iPhone makes sure everything is way below the warning level, all major HTC phones kind of flirt with that mark. Nexus One does best among them - still its pretty high to be there in our pockets. I can't argue with what performance a 1Gz (1.5GHz coming soon, even iPad is just 1GHz) mobile processor can give you - just that I need to get rich more quickly to get going with the american way of buying things while still saving the way Indians hold onto their bank balances (Thats a gujju trait I wish I was born with).

I have an eerie feeling to hold on to my hunger for few more weeks and wait for the initial reaction by users. I know Apple does not mess up with things - so all in all its going to be awesome. But, there is no rush as I don't know anyone who is visiting my part of the country in the next few months (before I "plan" my visit in the mythical months of May & June).

Apps for "Great" Cooks

I rushed out from my office. Since few hours I could not resist the ideas coming into my mind. I had to write them down somewhere and may be work on it later (which has never happened yet and it stays in the story boarding phase forever)

Well, I had this amazing idea of designing an App specifically to cater the Indian palate in a better way. The entire ride from office to home made me hungry for food as well as thought as to how it can solve the problem of being a terrible cook especially if you fall anywhere within my range of cooking expertise. If I ever go to that show "Worst Cooks in America", I can easily give them a run for their money for weeks. May be they should have an Idol to celebrate my success.

Anyways, before I could start on my ideas and the images popping out in my brain causing enough bile to flow & making me hungry (this sentence is going no where like Sarah Palin) - I did my due diligence to do some research on Apple's philosophy of "There's an app for everything".

Believe me, this App was in the front featured section. Front Page. Was my idea stale? Nah, not really. But when I looked at the App - It put a dent into my thought process. Apple Apps are so picture perfect. It's made to be sold. At any price - the page looked so awesome that I was like ... hmm how can I better on this?

So may be if you guys have an iphone and want to try out some recipes at home or may be just want to get organized in the cooking department, Try these. I have no affiliations what so ever & neither I have an iphone (which should make me the last person to recommend you this). But, nonetheless I would vouch for everything Apple. Now, if the folks at Apple approve this to go on the front featured section - there must be something worthy about it.

Moral of the Story - Nothing beats Apple in Showing off!

What an end to the Week it Was

What a weekend it was .....

There was the Russell Peter's Green Card tour in New York City. Watching the show was worth every penny. After an hour, I was tired of laughing. My jaws hurt and the mouth was dry. It was hilarious and grose. If you know that there is a tour going to be in your city - You have to watch it. And do not, remember do not, get the first row seats. You are digging your grave. But then, somebody has to get those seats. So, good luck!

Ishqiya - the movie had a great preview but I did not know anything else about it. Nor had I heard the soundtrack. What a surprise. I have couple of friends from M.P. and U.P. Believe me the language used in the movie portrays the hindi dialect used by people of bhopal and gorakhpur. Some of my good friends are from there and I could literally hear them speak. The movie is awesome if you are well versed with the local colloquial terms used to describe adultery. And then there are punch line gags from Arshad Warsi. I was told that this movie was not directed by Vishal Bharadwaj - but it had all the essence and I found it a blend between Omkara and Kaminey. The story might not be 5/5 but everything else is. This is a great start to 2010 from the perspective of hindi movies. I hope you go watch it.

I am finding myself getting busy & tired every week with just about a lot of work pouring in. I am not sure how I am going to handle all this. But, I have to find something out. This weekend was a real stress buster.

Next week the Grand Dad of All Entertainment - The Super Bowl. Go Colts!!

No bells or whistles to start the Year 2010

There is not much happening these days. College Football is over. NFL is almost about to be done. I hope one of them - NY Jets, Vikings or Colts win (I root in that order). There's Lakers vs Knicks on 22nd which I have tickets for and then Russel Peters on 29th. But these are fillers.

Did I sign up for this not-so-interesting life? I think so. I mean I am just being a lazy ass here trying to put on some weight. I planned to do the following and did nothing:

1. Learn Ice Skating

2. Learn some version of Electronica (guitar, casio something)

3. Learn Badminton or Racquetball

4. Learn to F******* drive.

So, this weekend I am going to resume badminton for sure (hope the Manhattan Club reopens). I am going to find out whats the scoop on Ice Skating. This new year my wallet is just getting emptied on anything and everything. I have to shell out more for my new apartment (> $1100 man). Man! who says you can save in America. To top that, my favorite channel now-a-days on television is HGTV in HD. God damn it! I would love to buy property the way they show in there. At least, I will save something on rent. But again, the fifth thing which is missing in the above list is "Learn to Save money" which I don't think I will ever learn. Hence, there is no point in putting it there.

Past couple of days went like whirlwind and work has taken priority again. I have been listening to a lot of stuff out here Coke Studio. It got some good tracks.

Out of no-where: If I have to name 3 movies last year which you gotta kidding me if you haven't watched, they are (in no particular order)

1. District 9

2. Avatar

3. Hurt Locker

I did manage to watch a lot of movies last year and believe me I have watched 80% of these.

Last, I wish I could go home sometime this year. With every passing day, I think I keep forgetting my roots. Its about time I pay a visit to my Matrubhumi.