Is Google becoming less Geek friendly ?

Google has totally killed GTalk

That is sad on so many fronts.

Gtalk used to be a small app that would sit quietly in the notification part of the computer and when someone chats with you, it would pop up. If you used Yahoo messenger or MSN messenger - you know what I mean.

However, now to get the same functionality - you have to run through a few hoops. Firstly there is no standalone app available anymore. The alternate to GTalk is Hangout. Firstly the name itself has no Googly connotation to it. And to install it first you need to download the Chrome browser and then get the Hangout plugin. If you try it any other way - this is what you get.

Which makes me think - is Google becoming less Geek friendly ? By sacrificing the fun of being able to mix and match, people like me will be turned off. Sure it makes sense to have a nice unified experience by dumbing it down for the masses - but the torch bearers are the Geeks and Nerds who influence the masses. Once these guys start moving away to other platforms, the current platform starts to die bit by bit. The recent movies by Google reminds me of an earlier post Microsoft shooting itself in its foot ?

Its the same feeling I got when I used Inbox - now I am back to using the earlier Gmail interface.

All around in the Google ecosystem I see the same. More and more focus is going into making Chrome the one point of access. At one time Google used to have a lot of apps on Linux - which seemed quite cool as the entire Google platform (including Android) is Linux based. But they have been quitely shelving support on Linux ( Google Officially Drop Picasa For Linux ). Search results are now returned for your geo instead of actually useful links from around the world.

I am sure some of you may be thinking that I am cribbing about things which affect only a few people. But I think that these few people are the influencers for their friends and family when it comes to tech stuff. As people like us start using other platforms ( e..g Search on Duck Duck Go instead of Google ), we start recommending these to our influence circle.

The question that keeps revolving in my mind is - Is Google becoming less Geek friendly ?

Making Android Better

You may have read my last rant against Android. After posting that I got into a more constructive mode and started thing how the OS can be improved. This is based on the 2.x (Gingerbread) version of the Android OS as I do not have access to a 4.x version (Ice Cream Sandwich).

I have also defined ownership to Google or the Manufacturer as they need to work it out. Unlike apple's iOS, Android has much more complexity as it has to synergize with multiple vendors and a plethora of hardware.

1. Get rid of the internal memory concept. 

At this point, Android phones act like the older phone OSs which assumed a small internal memory and user expandable SD card slots to keep data. The problem with this approach is that with the Android market, users have the option to download hundreds of applications. But the internal memory limit means that you can hardly download more than 10 apps before the phone starts to cry out about issues with the memory being full.

Since the SD cards are cheap now, we can argue that a manufacturer sourcing a large number of memory chips ( without the plastic casing etc to put in the phone) should be able to get it quite cheap. Even a 2GB internal memory will do wonders. Most vendors provide an extra SD card anyways with your purchase, so to me it makes more sense that they have the memory as part of the device. If required, they can keep an additional SD card slot also for extra brownie points.

Ownership : Google, Manufacturers.

2. Make sure that the default apps do not crash. 

If there are some 3rd party apps that you download from the app store that crash, you expect it. But when the installed apps start crashing - that is just sloppiness. I have seen multiple crash on the default apps - most of them on the Android market application. This should not be happening.

Ownership : Google

3. Make it an easy way to reach the top of the screen. 

Due to the screen size limitations of the phone, many of the applications display content in a list view ( e.g. Twitter, Facebook etc). Android does not have an easy way to scroll up , so if I want to see the topmost tweet in a list of 100, i have to swipe up multiple times.

I have a solution : implement a long-press on the top bar which will make the currently active app jump to the top of the view.

Ownership : Google

4. Battery longevity. 

The battery life of an Android device is crap. The Samsung Galaxy ACE that I have was hardly lasting a day in my initial usage. If a call comes and lasts an hour ( my conf calls go on for longer than that) then I need to immidiately plug it in to charge even now.

Some ways are there of switching off Wifi/data etc - but then why would you want to buy a smartphone ?

Juice Defender is a great 3rd party software which helps out in the batter management. I strongly recommend that Google buy this company and integrate the battery savings into the core part of the OS.

Manufacturers also need to look at better battery options - either as default , or in worst case as available battery packs. My phone has a 1350mA capacity battery. Why cant it have a 2500mA battery pack ?

Ownership : Google, Manufacturers

5. Define different hardware profiles.

One of the most irritating thing about Android devices is that they promise a lot in terms of features, but when it comes to actually running them, they are really bad. For example, live wallpapers are sooo cool, but they suck up the mobile's performance. Since nowadays manufacturers are coming out with all sorts of Android based devices - from low end to high end phones, it makes sense to have different hardware profiles for different hardware levels. This will tie into the Android Market, so that you can only download and install applications which adhere to the settings on your phone.

Ownership : Google, Manufacturer

6. Clean up the Android Market

The market is in a mess. Its hard to find anything. Search will list down a lot of stupid apps which you do not want and going through the lists is a pain.

Google needs to curate the applications submitted and have a guideline for minimum quality. Like Apple did, they should also disallow multiple frivolous apps. Its not a number game to see which appstore has more downloads, but it should be a quality game to see which appstore has better apps.

Also, i think that allowing manufacutrers, telcos etc having their own app stores is killing the user experience. This was a pretty bad move on Google's part. There should just be one android market not multiple ones on the phone. And even if you do have multiple markets, then the logins should be the same.

Ownership : Google, Manufacturer

I dislike Android phones now

I have started to dislike using the Android phones.Sure there are a lot of people who swear by it - but I am getting hit by issues which I did not have to contend with in the last couple of years that I was using the iPhone. Here are just a few of those.

Why is it that the phone manufacturers do not learn from apple and provide substantial internal storage ? Here I got a very stupid error which wants me to uninstall applications. WTF ! Why have an Android market if you cannot even install programs on the device ? The internal memory of the device is just around the 200MB mark - its a joke.

I

Also keep getting frequent crashes. I understand if there is a crash due to a 3rd party application - but this crash occurred in the android market application !

And now the straw that breaks the camel's back. See the message underlined in red. The damn device rejected an incoming SMS ! WTH !

The phone manufacturers are still taking the consumers for a ride. I am also guilty of being a gullible party - but this is also to do with my friends who let me down in guiding for a new phone. They did not point out these issues - and now when I come across this - they say its there.

Unfortunately I am stuck with this phone for sometime till the price of the 4S comes down in India or I get it from a friend. This is quite frustrating. Simple common sense has not been used by the Android team and the Android vendors.

Sometimes, in interviews people ask what can be changed for a product. If someone asks me about Android - well, they will get an ear full. 

iPhone vs Android

For those who did not really like my write up :)

( Courtesy : Greywulf's blog )

Android vs iPhone

Yesterday I got a chance to chill out with an Android phone - the HTC Desire. Its being used by one of my team mates (recently I have started working on a project with tenCube which makes the security software WaveSecure).

As a long time user of the iPhone (one and a half years now!), and having a good knowledge of current trends in the market I can say that I would passably know what I am talking about :)

At the end of the playtime ( which was like a few hrs since we were celebrating 5 years of tenCube in a lounge ) , I am left with mixed feelings. Let me elaborate.

What the Android has that the iPhone does not.

The biggest +like factor is the ability to multitask. That was like wow ! coming from the limitations of the iPhone. My colleages gtalk was working silently in the background, and he got an IM from another colleague from Singapore - which shows up as a scrolling text in the top status bar. I was like WTF ! cool !

Since its a google android, it works seamlessly with gmail. In fact - when you first start an android based phone, it will ask you for your gmail id - and if you are not using gmail as your primary email - you are not gonna enjoy the integration. But I suppose, if you are reading this post, you do have a gmail id.

Apart from this...

... nothing much.

Some comparison Notes

These are the things that I noticed while playing around with it.

iPhone has a kind of 'multiple desktop' concept where you can just scroll around by swiping left and right. In Android you require 2 steps : 1. click the button to bring out the list of apps and then scroll through them.

Android has the gadgets concept which is like the Windows or Google gadgets that you have on your PC. I think these are highly overrated as per screen you cannot really fit in more than 1 or max 2 gadgets.

Game quality on the iPhone is much superior to the Android. I have Assasin's Creed and Hero of Sparta on my phone, and going through the Android market I was not really able to find out any similar kind of game.

The Android market is tiny - and also not very well categorized. For instance, on the main screen you just have 'games' and 'apps' category. in games you just have some 4 different categories. In spite of what people may say about the android market place increasing - it still feels very limited and stifled.

Another annoyance is that the size of download is tucked away in the text and not shown at the top. Further it is greyed out - its like they want to trick you into downloading without knowing the size.

Form factor both were near enought. I guess thats cause of HTC engineering rather than Google.

Some pages have login screens with the login and password boxes. On the iPhone when you touch any of these, the page zooms so that you can easily see what you are typing in. On Android there is no such functionality. On top of it, double tapping does not work as expected. On the iPhone double tapping expands the table element , so for instance, if you double tap on a text column, it will 'fit-width' and you can continue with it. On android, it just zooms without looking at the element you are tapping. So most of the time, you end up pinching to zoom correctly.

The HTC also does not do landscape view - which is a mystery to me. Some text is still a bit small when you look at it in portrait mode. So, i am used to tilting to horizontal mode and can easily read it. On the HTC, I was not able to find such stuff.

The Facebook app for iPhone is much much better than that on Android. I think that the app is still new to Android and expect it to improve, but the one on iPhone is just better.

oh, and gmail integration is also doable on the iPhone by hooking up your gmail account as an exchange account. So that advantage goes away.

Conclusion.

On the whole - the User eXperience is much better on the iPhone, even now. Android has one upped on the functionality scale, but I have a big suspecion that the iPhone release ( on 7th June 2010) is going to blow away that advantage.

At this point I will not recommend any phone to you. Wait for the 7th , and i will be doing a review of the iPhone OS.

But one thing I do know - my iPhone 3G will not be doing multi tasking as apple is deliberately crippling that option.

Multiple GTalk accounts

If you are like me, you will probably be having multiple Gmail accounts. I have a primary gmail account, and a couple of google apps accounts. The issue always cropped up that I could not use gtalk for all the accounts. Fortunately a bit of digging around, and it is quite a simple solution !

Just create a shortcut on the desktop for gtalk. If you have an issue creating the shortcut, navigate via the start menu to gtalk , right click -> copy -> right click on desktop -> paste.

Now right click the shortcut, and chose 'Porperties'.

In Target, add a /nomutex option at the end. E.g. : following is how it looks like in my shortcut.

"C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe" /nomutex

Now, just click on the gtalk shortcut to start a new instance of the talk messenger. Add your gmail and domain accounts.

Have fun !

iPhone view for Google Reader

I don't really like the cluttered interface of Google Reader

I always had problems reading RSS feeds using the Google Reader. If you use the default scroll, it marks as read the items that you were just scrolling through, and if you change the settings, you have to manually click the items that you have read to be 'mark as read'. I don't know who designed the UI, but it sucks. 

On the other hand , the interface on the iPhone is pretty good. I realized I was reading more on the iPhone than on the desktop. Hmm.. 

What people don't tell you is that it is doable on the PC also ! All you have to do is use the correct URL for the google reader and presto, it shows the blog items as though you were on the iPhone ! Now this is comfortable for me ! 

The URL you have to use is : 

http://www.google.com/reader/i 

Neat and minimalistic interface of the Google Reader in iPhone view.

Have Fun ! 

Using spreadsheets for drawing.

nice idea. use each cell as a pixel. Reminds me of the math copies we used to have in our childhood. I used some of them for pixelating a game i developed in my 10th class for the BBC micro. Similar stuff, but with 4 people collaborating.

This is how i would *like* to work !

From GK's blog on the Google Germany Office.

Google Doodle

This is a cool video of Denis Hwang drawing a Google Doodle. I wonder what is the system he is using for it ? It looks like a cool piece of software !

mobile gmail

Google just launched a gmail download for your mobile phone. It works on a variety of phones as its a java app and only requires JVM. Don't know what a JVM is - no sweat. If you are having one of the recent Nokia phones - it will work just fine for you. The following screenshots are from a E61 phone . Oh yes - you also need a data connection like gprs for this to work.






The last screen shows how to turn of gmail from remembering your password. Usually you will not require it as the assumption is that only you will be using your mobile and will be signed in always. Unfortunately, I was using a borrowed phone as the Treo650 does not have a JVM and had to figure out how to make gmail forget my password.

All in all one nifty install and makes checking gmail all that much more easier.

Green Google

Man ! My respect for Google keeps going up.

After reading the Google Story, it connected with me as to why Google is getting the success it has got till now. If you have not read the book - read it. Recommend it into your corporate library if you cannot afford it ;) ... and all the other companies here in India only worry about how to make non-functional policies !

So, today, the story which captured my mind : Google Goes Solar.

You may argue that they are not going to run their data centers with the soloar panel , but man .. they are making the effort in the green direction. Awesome stuff. Slashdot as usual is up to the wisecracks about 'Google now being dependent on Sun' ;-) (in case you dont know Sun is also a company). You can find a vidoe of their partners EI Solution making use of Google Earth and SketchUp to show the project. Pretty cool !

Another story/blog picked up as to why Google is a better place to work than Microsoft - Google vs Microsoft.

Le Tour on Ze Google Earth

Tour de France is an annual event held in france where participants from round the world compete in one of the most gruelling cycle races on this planet. Last 7 years had been dominated by Lance Armstrong which is amazing as he did it after recovering from cancer.

Now, with the use of Google Earth, you can check out the route they take ! You can download the kml file , and view using Google Earth. Here's a couple of screenshots to get you interested !

The entire route

Through the mountains

Google Talk now with Avtars !

Google Talk has just been updated. It now shows avtars !!! You can read more on it in what's new.

Google's Blog Hacked !

Google's blog got hacked today ! Not often it happens that someone hacks into google, but this time - there is no doubting. I took this screenshot of the errant page - minutes before the blog was shut down.

I guess google should hire this chap :-)

Update : Google has this explanation on their site - which says that they had mistakenly deleted the blog !! Ouch !! But is it true or a coverup ??? Maar diya jaye yaan chood diya jaye?

Book : The Google Story

Finally got my hands on the book. It costs around Rs600, and is only available in HardCover edition as of now in India. Fortunately, was able to get it in my office library. I think I will be buying the soft copy of it once that is out.

The book answers to me the question as to why some startups are sucessful and some are not. In my life I cannot think of any company that has has such a big impact on the globe as has Google. It has redefined the way people look at the web. In fact it has become the reason people go on the web.

The WWW started as a means to communicate between the geeks - who then passed it on to the masses. With it information was available to anyone who wanted it. However, mostly when someone wanted to find it - it was not available. That's where google came in and that is the first lesson for any startup wannabes :

* To be a startup , you don't have to make something totally radical. You need to fix a problem.

Check out Paul Graham's take on Startups.

The second thing that came out was that you need to be passionate about your work. I think that this is the one big thing about making or breaking any company. Bill Gates was passionate about doing business and putting a "PC on every Desk". Google is passionate about "searching the worlds information". And working is always about putting in a lot of effort. From the book :
"Inspiration still requires plenty of perspiration"

Which brings me to the third point : Dream Big. Unless you dream big, you cannot do big. The Google founders thought they could download the entire web on their computers and started off with that - and they are still doing it. It does not matter if you were wrong somewhere - as long as you think big. If you think small, you hit the ceiling sometime or the other. You finish what you were setting out to do and stop... wondering - "what next ?".

After finishing the book, i was thinking about why as Indians we have not done so well on the innovation front ? Why is it that we are the sweat shops of the world ( I have in my 7+ years mostly worked only on bug fixing projects) while we claim to be the best brains around ? And the answer is that we tend to ignore the 2nd point - Passion about work.

There is no dearth of people trying to strike out on their own. But they go wrong in two areas :
1. They don't work on things that they are passionate about. I guess it has a lot to do with our society pressures. We are always lauded to go and do the 'acceptable' thing - like getting a degree, getting a post degree and getting married . The steps of life are laid out for us. And like any big organization where people religiously follow the rules laid out - an individual stops thinking.
2. We are work shirkers. I guess it has a lot to do with not having passion for work. The world famous 'babudom' is a result of this. 9-5 jobs where you don't do anything. It just kills any thoughts of working hard. In many places hard work is considered only if a person cannot make ends meet.

I don't know about you guys, but I am fed up of doing bug fixing. I am fed up of working on things I don't have any passion about. I need a break.

Some interesting reads :
* Google Corporate Information
* Steve Jobs
* Bill Gates
* Vibhu Rishi

Google on the cover of TIME

Google is on the cover of TIME magazine. These guys are the rockstars of this century !

The mottos :

"Do no Evil"
"Users first"

Read the article on the time's website.

Google of the Future ?

Google is the big daddy of the tech companies of today. From obscurity to gigantic fame, the small company of a bare bones search engine has come a long way. But, how will Google be in the future ???

CNN Money has an article on this. Read more of it here.

Some scenarios :

Scenario 1 (Circa 2025): Google Is The Media
Scenario 2 (Circa 2015): Google is the Internet
Scenario 3 (Circa 2020): Google is Dead
Scenario 4 (Circa 2105): Google is God

Google Zeitgeist 05

Somehow Google just keeps me interested, and they do it by bringing out things that people like me like. A search engine which is superfast and accurate, an email service which had more storage space than anyone else can give, a talk client which ties in with the email service and with a superclean interface.

Rounding up the year Google brings the zeitgeist which follow the major trends of 05. Want to know the topmost searches ? Or how the searches were based on the different natural phenomena of 05 ? Head over to :
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist2005.html

Here's a sample graph to get you interested :

Who is scared of Google ?

Well ... it seems that everyone is !