Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category


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Taming Our Shameful Digital Distractions

February 17th, 2010 by Erin Posted in Software Development, Technology | No Comments »

Think about it.

How much time do you waste surfing the Web?

I’m not going to lie. I fritter a lot of time away on Facebook and Twitter. A lot of time.

I can’t help it.

I sit down at my computer each morning with every intention to get some work done – but my wandering mouse takes over and soon I’m redirected to see what my friends are up to.

I absolutely hate it!

BUT, I have found some help to get me back on the straight and narrow.

Enter RescueTime and LeechBlock.

These applications, also called Internet blocking software, are designed to block various parts of the Internet so that when your mind strays, you’re stopped from giving into your unproductive ways.

First, RescueTime.

RescueTime works by keeping track of everything that happens on your computer, and then reports your habits in a series of charts and graphs.

Tech writer Farhad Manjoo recently gave RescueTime a whirl and says he found the app to be incredibly “illuminating.”

“I learned, for instance, that during a typical month I spend more than 70 hours surfing the web, much of it on news and social networking sites,” writes Manjoo.

By comparison, Manjoo found that he spent half as much time in Microsoft Word.

Now, if you are already aware of your bad online habits and just need some good old-fashion help taming them, then LeechBlock web filtering software may be the best medicine.

LeechBlock is a free add-on for Firefox and functions like a stern nanny. Users tell the program which Web sites to keep away from them at certain times of the day, and at the appointed hour you have chosen, LeechBlock will stop you cold.

LeechBlock is also quite flexible as it lets users block different sites at different times of the day. Or, users can set a maximum daily or hourly limit for certain sites.

Certainly, there is no way to tell whether these “digital nannies” will help you kick your bad online habits once and for all.

The mind is a restless place – even for the most seasoned professional.

But these Internet blocking software applications can be helpful in getting you to at least consider how you waste time on the Internet.

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There’s A Method To Google’s Madness

February 10th, 2010 by Erin Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »

I have to admit that I was pretty surprised to see a Google commercial during the Super Bowl.

Don’t get me wrong… I absolutely LOVED it. The concept was great.

But I thought, why would Google – the #1 name brand on the planet – shell out big bucks for a commercial during the Super Bowl?

The answer came yesterday.

Introducing Google Buzz - yet another social network.

Do we really need another social networking tool?

Google thinks so… and here’s why.

Google has taken cues from Facebook, Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, and Yelp – and combined them into one package.

Buzz will provide a stream of status updates, pictures, links, and videos from your friends. You can “like” these items and comment on them. And if you use Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader, or Twitter, you can also automatically have those items imported into your stream. And Buzz will recommend items you might like based on your friends’ activity.

The hook is you must have a Gmail account to use Buzz – as the platform resides right there inside Google’s email service.

Google can probably expect a huge Gmail surge in the coming months due to plain curiosity.

Will people stay with Gmail just to use Buzz?

Probably not.

I’m not sure people have time for another social network. Getting used to Facebook’s new homepage layout is already time consuming – so imagine getting acquainted with a whole new service?

Sure, I’ll check out Google Buzz. I may even use it once or twice – but really, I’m a creature of habit.

I like what I like.

Even if the social web is a disorganized mess – I’m not sure if we need Google to clean house.

Sometimes chaos is good.

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Social Media, iPhone Apps Help Make A Difference

January 27th, 2010 by Erin Posted in Technology, Twitter | No Comments »

I’m no stranger to adversity.

Sure, ALL of us hit a rough patch now and then – but what I’ve been through, and what the people of Haiti are now growing through, is anything but rough.

It’s pure hell.

My husband and I, and our then 9-month-old daughter, were in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. As you know, the storm sucked the life out of the vibrant city – leaving it flooded and in ruins. The images you saw on TV were bad. But you have no idea what it was like to be there in person. No idea.

I expect the same can be said for what is unfolding right now in Haiti. I’ve seen the footage on the evening news, but being there is another story.

There is a silver lining though.

It is the monumental effort to give and help.

Back in 2005, I was astounded by the generosity of people across this country, and others, to help New Orleanians deal with Katrina’s aftermath. Donation after donation helped the city heal and rebuild. The call to action back then was, what I thought, unprecedented.

What we’re seeing now in Haiti is historic.

Aid is pouring in at an unbelievable rate – more so than ever before. And, it’s all because of technology.

Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have helped people spread the word, and many one-click FREE iPhone applications make donating effortless.

I often wonder how things would have played out in New Orleans – or even in tsunami-ravaged southeast Asia – if Twitter and more smartphone applications were around.

Funny, it was just five years ago – yet it seems like a completely different time.

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Peer Into Microsoft’s LookingGlass

January 20th, 2010 by Erin Posted in Technology, Twitter | No Comments »

Personal branding.

Professional branding.

Online reputations.

For some, livelihood depends on what’s being said and passed around on the Internet.

Given the power of sites like Twitter and Facebook, online reputation tracking has never been more important.

After all, you want the power to react after someone has hung you (or your small business) out to dry, right?

Months ago, I touched on an application - Salesforce CRM for Twitter - that allows small businesses to track their complaints through basic searches.

Sure, that is all well and good – but now there’s a new, bigger breed of tools that can help you monitor your rep.

Enter Traackr’s Authority List.

Squidoo’s Brands in Public – which is a total (and expensive) waste of time.

And, perhaps the biggest and most controversial one of them all, Microsoft’s LookingGlass.

LookingGlass monitors conversations on social media sites, including Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube, so that companies can track consumer sentiment about their products in real-time. The product can also connect social media feeds with elements like customer databases, CRM centers and sales data within an organization. Most importantly, it will keep a log of what’s been said. Where, when and by whom.

LookingGlass is still in its testing phase but, in good Microsoft fashion, the company is singing its praises.

An excerpt from Clickz:

“While testing the system during the past nine months, Marty Taylor Collins, a group marketing manager for Microsoft, said the information acquired on at least two occasions saved her department from a serious misstep. First, the tool halted her team’s plan to discontinue an ad campaign when it helped them discover that a lead character had quietly become popular. In another instance, a PR disaster was averted during the beta-test release of Windows 7, after a system crashed just after launch.”

LookingGlass appears to be the total package, right?

Wrong.

There’s a hitch.

Microsoft is limiting its LookingGlass services to companies that purchase its suite of Microsoft products.

Way to share to the love Microsoft!

Given the bitter disgust surrounding the Windows 7 release, Microsoft better rethink its strategy.

Or, better yet, Microsoft should take a good hard look at itself through LookingGlass.

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Apple iPhone vs Nexus One

January 13th, 2010 by Erin Posted in Technology | No Comments »

108528_nexusiphone

It’s on!

The big reveal has taken place.

Finally, we know what the Google phone – Nexus One – is all about.

And while the world is giddy, Apple is no doubt a tad bit nervous today.

Truth be told, I haven’t seen Nexus One with my own eyes – but I’m hearing it is about to give the iPhone a run for its money. Its specs alone are enough to take the iPhone head-on.

Comparisons between the two have just begun – and, well, by the sound of what’s being said on the street, Nexus One simply obliterates the iPhone.

But the experts at Techtree offer a different view. Here’s their objective take on the iPhone vs. Nexus One in some key feature areas:

Screen

When they launched the iPhone in 2007, a resolution of 320×480 was insane. Remember, these were the days of the N95s and the P1i’s, where QVGA resolutions ruled the roost. 240×320 was the best you could get and I remember looking at the N73 once and my jaw dropped when I saw the screen resolution of the now outdated phone. Just when I was sure that mobile phone screens couldn’t get any better, they launch the iPhone. If that wasn’t enough, they add multitouch to it, something unheard of then.

Fast forward to 2010 and almost three years later, while Apple is still stuck at 320×480, the likes of Symbian S60 have moved to 360×640 and the Nexus One with a 800×480 pixel screen makes the iPhone screen look pedestrian. Add to it the fact that the Nexus One boasts of an AMOLED screen, which further tilts the scale in favour of the Google Phone. Another thing that should not be forgotten is that the Nexus One has a larger 3.7- inch display. The extra few inches does boost your ego by 10x, doesn’t it? (Warning: Proximity to HTC HD2 users not recommended for Nexus One users) So, if you bought the iPhone for the sole reason that it had a kick-ass screen, it’s time to change your phone!

Imaging

This was a grey area in the iPhones armour during the time of the 2G and the 3G iterations of the device. In the company of the 3.2 and 5 megapixels of the world, the iPhones 2 megapixel camera was simply outdated. It did not have autofocus or flash and some even termed it a bad job at making a pinhole camera. To add insult to injury, it was incapable of capturing videos unless you jailbreak the phone and defy Apple’s command. With the arrival of the 3GS in 2009, Apple played catch-up with the world and managed to cram in a 3.2 megapixel camera. This took far better pictures and supported video recording as well, that too at a very decent VGA resolution.

The first generation Nexus One already boasts of a 5 megapixel camera, with LED flash and autofocus and at least on paper should take far better pictures than the iPhone. The video recording too is better (not by much though). The Nexus One is capable of recording videos in D1 (720×480) resolution at 20FPS. While we are yet to see how the videos turn out, this is still better than what the 3GS can do now.

Operating System

To start with, this is not an iPhone OS Vs Android battle but why the Nexus One is simply a more open platform as compared to the OSX platform of the iPhone. Apple’s policy of not allowing developers to make apps that mimic the core functionality of their own existing apps viz. the calendar, browser and even an e-mail client is not applicable to Android. This throws in a lot of options for the consumer. I don’t need 200 different apps to fart online! Give me a better e-mail client or at least the choice to switch between the applications of my choice.

Similar is the case with browsers. Who wouldn’t love to see Opera Mobile run on an iPhone? Yes, the existing browser on the iPhone is quite capable, but then, all we are asking for is a choice! Apart from this, from what we hear from primary reports, the Nexus One seems to work a lot faster than the iPhone – even with the phone multitasking. While this might be attributed to the higher Clock speed of the Snapdragon processor inside the Nexus One, we should not forget hat the iPhone 3GS too is powered by a very competent ARM Cortex A8 processor, which by no means is a laggard.

Voice Command

Whats the big deal huh? The iPhone already has it. I can just say in the artistes name and the iPhone will play it for me. I can even call my friend by simply saying her pet name on my iPhone. And that’s where it all comes to an abrupt halt. The Nexus One’s biggest and probably the most praiseworthy feature is the amazing speech to text ability it possesses. Too bored to type in your e-mail or update your facebook status or even tweet? Simply say it aloud and the phone will type it for you! While watching the launch of the phone on Tuesday, if there was a feature for which there was a collective applause, this was it. Who needs a physical keyboard if this works the way it is supposed to work? However, we will still take the voice commands with a pinch of salt as we Indians tend to have accent issues. If Google has taken care of that part as well (I’m quite sure they would have), this is something that would make even Swype look passe’ and so 2009!

Application Approval

While this does not have anything to do with the iPhone and the Nexus One directly, the eco system in which both operate are important. iPhone’s app store was a revolutionary initiative. Whatever we see now in the form of the Android Market and the Ovi Store and the BlackBerry AppWorld are nothing but copies of Apple’s idea of a centralised app store.

While the app store has been a roaring success, it still suffers from a “fascist” app approval process. The Android Market on the other hand has lesser apps and from a developer point of view, the process of approval is far less tedious. Also, thanks to the open platform, Android guys have a lot less to bother about than the ones who affix the stamp of approval at Cupertino.

Battery

So you love your iPhone very much and use it 24/7. But one fine day you realise you haven’t turned off the phone in two years and that the battery inside it (yes there’s one in there) needs to be replaced. Under normal circumstances (read, if you use a normal phone), you buy a new battery, open the lid at the back and replace it and continue what you were doing. But hey, this is Apple, we do things differently here. If your battery goes kaput on the iPhone all you need to do is to drag yourself to the nearest Apple Store (or a dealer in India) to have the battery replaced. This is because Apple thinks batteries are immovable objects and should remain inside till it meets its fate. The Nexus One happens to fall under the “normal phones” category and if you ever feel you’ve had enough of its battery, go ahead and get a new one.

Last, but not least, I’d like to add that Google has not married itself to one service provider – as Apple has done with AT&T.

That, in my book, is the biggest boon of all.

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