Five best Android News Readers

Content discovery on the go makes a smartphone worth its bargain. There are many ways you can discover and consume content on your Android phone. News Aggregation or Reader Apps are one of those ways!

There are many News Reader Applications available in the Android Market. Google Reader is just one of them.  Google Reader is a simple and very useful Reader Application. That is, if you have the habit of neatly managing your Google Reader Account. Many of us may not like the simplicity and straightforwardness that Google Reader offers on Android. Many of us may like a little more colour, a little more social integration into reading and a little more automatic content aggregation when it comes to a News reader App. There are many applications in the Android Market that just promise to do that. However, not all of them are true to their promises.

What I am trying to do here is to give you 5 Android News Reader Applications that I think are good. I use all of them one way or the other. Here we go:

Feedly 

Rating: ★★★★☆

Feedly is the smart and stylish way to read news on your Android Phone or Tablet. Its minimalistic design and elegant animations make reading a pleasure. Feedly automatically curates news based on certain key topics that are built into the Application. You can integrate your Google Reader account with Feedly and keep track of your rss feeds. You can also add websites of your choice to Feedly and categorize them. You have in-app sharing for Twitter and Facebook. Feedly also uses in-phone sharing so that you can share content using any Social Network App you have on your phone. Feedly depends on website feeds to curate news. Now, this means Feedly may not be able to give you the whole content in one tap as most websites have their rss feeds closed to give you only snippets of a write-up. Feedly has a built in browser which enables you to open the feed on Feedly itself. Don't worry if you can not read a website you have opened because the text size is too small for your eye. Feedly offers an option for you to reformat the content to make it readable on your mobile screen. 

Pulse

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Pulse is the most popular News Reader on Android. It is very simple. You can put five pages of rss feed on your screen and read on the go. Perhaps what makes pulse popular is the fact that it automatically strips the website html and present the content in a readable format. If you are someone who have a few website you check out regularly and you want them all in one place, pulse is just for you. You can swipe horizontally or vertically to read your feeds. And you can bookmark any of your content on Pulse Me to read it later. If you are using Google Chrome as your browser you can go straight to the Chrome Market and download the Pulse Me extension. Now, you can bookmark what you read on Chrome using Pulse Me to read it later on your phone. The only issue with Pulse is that it drains a lot of battery in the background.

Taptu
Rating: ★★★★☆

If you talk about design, Taptu is a single page replica of Pulse. I should say it is an improvement on Pulse. Taptu mixes what Feedly and Pulse does. Unlike Pulse with streams for individual websites, in Taptu you have streams for topic. You can either make your own stream or use any of those streams curated specially by Taptu. Taptu gives you a lot of freedom when it comes to curating content. You can colour code streams, make stream-width big or small and move streams around based on what you want to see first when you fire up the application. Like Pulse, Taptu strips html from the content automatically and present to you in a readable format.

ChannelCaster
Rating: ★★★★★

ChannelCaster is social news, they say. Ya, it curates links from your social networks and brings them all in one place. Then you have pre-curated channels you can use as you please. ChannelCaster stands out for its sleek design and user interface. If you are someone who likes a little splash on your App, ChannelCaster is good for you. Its design gives these so called well-designed iPhone Applications a run for their money. Oh yes, on ChannelCaster you can curate your content based on what you like too. You have the option to build your own Channels using key words and rss feeds. Tweets, Facebook Links, Webcontent, Video, Photographs - you name it and ChannelCaster allows you to type ina topic you like and bring all the content on the web about that topic in one place. The only issue is, once you find the content you may have to use another browser  because Channelcaster opens the content in its native web browser and it may not be as readable as you find them on Feedly or Pulse.

News360
Rating: ★★★☆☆

You have News360 for both phone and tablet in the Android Market. News360, like ChannelCaster, is sleek and yummy to look at. It is blue! Now, News360 works on topics. You need no rss feed. You need no website name. All you need are key words. And you can keep on building your news feed using any number of key words as you like. The best thing about News360 is that you can localize content using your gps on the phone. I would say, News360 is Google News in the form of an App. If Google were to come up with an App for their news site, it would be something like News360. the only issue with News360 is that it is uses a lot of data in the process of looking good.

Safe Social Networking: Orkut is safer than Facebook

I am amazed at the speed at which Facebook is catching up in India, pushing Orkut to the background. Well, I am generalizing based on my personal experience and not based on any research. I see many of my friends becoming more active on Facebook and less active on Orkut. I see bloggers in an eternal struggle to add more friends so that they can share their links with as many people as possible. I see Indian Companies coming up with Fan Pages on a daily basis. You are right, we do that because Facebook has a lot many more Social Networking options than Orkut.

I am on Facebook for the last five month or so. I kind of liked Facebook for their cute colour and fonts, layout and interactive networking options. I felt Facebook looks classy and more social networking than Orkut. I wondered why, Google, with all their mastery of building a brand was neglecting Orkut. If Google made up its mind, it could have taken Orkut way beyond what is is now. But I have never seen Orkut move beyond what it was a year or two ago, except for the new interface they recently launched. I was all the time wondering why!

Untill I read Dennis Yu and his how to spam Facebook like a pro.According to him, many of  the games, the quizes and the other applications that keep popping up while you are on Facebook are aimed at doing three things:

• Installing a spyware or a tracking cookie on your computer which will later open a back door from your computer to smuggle out information
• Trick you into giving up your email address and phone number
• Trick you into giving up your or your friend's profile information

Now I think I know why Google is keeping Orkut simple. It is just about social networking and nothing else.

Convert Pen Drive into RAM for Vista!

Can you convert your Pen Drive or Thumb Drive or USB Drive or whatever you call it into a Random Access Memory for your computer? The answer is NO, you can't! And YOU CAN, if you are using Vista.

You see there is one major Difference between RAM and a Flash Drive. They are built differently, for different purposes. They store information differently. RAM uses volatile memory, which requires power to maintain stored information.In other words, the information the computer stores on RAM is lost once you switch off the computer. Flash Drives on the other hand, like your Hard Drive, is non-volatile storage. What ever information you send to a Flash Drive is recorded so that you can access it later.

There is also another Memory for computer called Virtual Memory. Now you must have seen a temporary file stored on your computer, as you are working with a Word file or Excel sheet. Your computer stores the inactive part of the file you are working on and saves it temporarily on your Hard Drive so that your RAM can be freed up. This is exactly what Virtual Memory does. Virtual Memory uses your Hard Drive and gives an application the "impression that it has contiguous working memory (an address space), while in fact it may be physically fragmented and may even overflow on to disk storage."

Windows Vista takes it a step further. It enables you to use a new technology - ReadyBoost. ReadyBoost works using flash drives. Using ready boost, you can convert your Flash Drive into a cache. I am sure you have heard about cache, on your web browser. It is a place where the browser stores previous responses from a web server. In other words, things like cookies, pictures etc are stored on you Browser Cache so that the browser need not fetch it again as you move from one page to another when you are browsing.

Now ReadyBoost converts your USB Drive into a cache so that your computer can free the Virtual Memory and RAM. This makes your computer work faster than it actually does if you have not enabled ReadyBoost. Now how do you enable ReadyBoost?

• Make sure that your USB Drive is 1 GB or more. 
• Plug it into your computer.
• Scan it and fix it when your Vista prompts you to do so. 
• Go to My Computer.
• Right click on the USB Drive Icon and go to Properties.
• If your Flash Drive can be a ReadyBoost, the second last tab on your Properties Window will read so. [Some old Flash Drives may not be able to handle ReadyBoost]
• Click on the ReadyBoost Tab on Property Window
• Select "Use this device"
• Allocate Flash Drive space or in other words, tell your computer how much space it can use from your Flash Drive.
• Click OK
• Restart your computer and feel the difference

Please note that the space allocated for ReadyBoost on your Flash Drive cannot be used for other storage. In other words you can not save your files  if you have converted the whole Flash Drive space into ReadyBoost.  The trick is to use only half of your Flash drive as ReadyBoost and the other half for storing important files.

Portable Applications: Get essential applications on pendrive

All of us are used to running Applications and Programmes from your computer. What if you can run the same applications from a USB drive or pen drive or thumb drive or what ever you call that cute little thing that you use to store information? The thing is, you can.

Portable Applications are useful if you do not have a lap top and you are using public computers. They are useful if your computer is controlled by an Administrator and you cannot add or remove applications from your computer. You can store your log in data or anything else on the Portable Applications, take them any where and they will work the same way they worked when you had them on last time.

For example, if you use Google Chrome to browse and you have the habit of saving bookmarks and password on your browser, Portable Google Chrome will help you do that on any computer and still have all the data with you. This means, ton a great extend you don't have to worry about leaving your password on a Public PC.

Installing a Portable Application is easy. If you have a USB Flash drive, the installer will prompt you and help you install it on the drive. And these portable applications are not version specific. You can run it on XP, Vista or Windows 7. [I have not tested it on Linux or Ubuntu]

I would like to share with you a few portable applications that I use.

1. Portable Google Chrome
2. Portable Google Chrome Beta
3. Portable Mozilla Firefox
4. Portable MSN Messenger 
5. Portable Skype
6. Portable Thunderbird 
7. Portable Open Office
8. Portable Yahoo Messenger 
9. GnuCash Portable
10. Sumatra PDF Portable 
11. VLC Media Player Portable 
12. Cool Player Portable 

I use a 4 GB Pendrive. These 12 applications do not even take half of that pendrive. I have converted the rest of the space into a folder that will allow me to save important documents that I want to take along when I go somewhere.

The best music gadget on your desktop!

When Google does things, they do it in such a way that you will instantly love it. Google Desktop is one good example. It makes life easier by enabling your PC to perform the way you want it to perform. Of course there are several issues about Google Desktop, including the space it takes on your C Drive when it index your files. But that is some space I am willing to give Google Desktop for making search on my desktop easier.

As I was searching for Google Gadgets that would enable me to make my PC more useful, i stumbled upon their music gadget. It is a plugin that indexes music files and bring them together on your desktop so that it is easy for you to search and play songs as you are on the move.

There are several limitations to many of the music players that are available today. One thing is that they are incapable of searching your files out and bring it for you when you need them. If you have too many files on your system and that too in different places, it is difficult for you to locate them. The Music Player by Google Desktop automatically adds all your music files to the library and all that you got to do is type in the song you want and presto, it is there for you.

As you see in the image, it categorizes songs Artist, Album and Track wise. You can add the song of your choice to the play list. Or the album of your choice to your playlist. Or the artist of your choice to your playlist.

What I like the most about this gadget is that you have one button less on your taskbar!

Windows Live Writer: Blogging made easier!

I always used to wish if I could take my own sweet time offline to write a post and publish it once I am done. That was not possible till I found Windows Live Writer.

To me blogging was always something I did online. From typing a post to proof reading it to publishing it. Typos used to creep in and I always had to go back and edit a post even after I published it. I tried a few Offline Blogging Applications. But none of them was worth the bargain. They were very basic and I don’t think any of they really understood what a blogger wants. I think Windows Live Writer understands a blogger better than many of the blogging platforms available today.

Live Writer provides a blogger with many options, options that many blogging platforms, including blogger can not give you. The best thing about Live Writer is the Preview Option. Live Writer downloads your log template so that it can show you the post as it is going to appear in the blog. From hyperlinking to inserting pictures to embedding maps to you name it and it is like Live Writer has it. Following the Google and Firefox steps, Microsoft has also allowed others to develop plugins and addons for Live Writer.

It makes blogging easier is one thing.It also makes blogging much more interesting than it was!

Synonym finding made easy!

There are hundreds of on-line dictionaries and most of them are worth the bargain. Asking Google to define a word for you is the easiest thing to do when you are hunting for meanings. Otherwise you have a choice of dictionaries from where you can glean the meanings. But when you want to find synonyms and antonyms of a particular word, things can be hard on you if you are using any of them. I find most of the online dictionaries sufficiently incapable in that area. And I found Synonym.com can do that job easily for us.

Synonym.com comes with three features as you can see. It has a synonym finder that helps you find similar words. It has an antonym finder that helps you find the opposite words. It also has a definition tool so that you can also go find the meaning if you want.

One thing I liked about Synonym.com: They categorize the synonyms that they find for you and give you a list of words in different sense of the search word. This is one feature I haven't found in any of the Online Dictionaries. Most of them may give you a list of similar words. But they never tell you in what sense the given words are the synonyms of the search word.

wibiya: make your blog a bit more interactive!

It's toolbar time for blogs. I don't know if you have noticed the blue toolbar on techedIN. It is there because I wanted to make techedIN a bit more interactive than it was. This feature on techedIN is brought to you by Wibiya, an Israeli start-up that is specialized in creating 'customized web-based toolbars.'

What value does it add to your blog? Well, see for yourself how it adds value to techedIN.

1. One click and you can translate the page into 11 languages, one at a time. Wibiya uses the Translation Feature offered by Google to do this. When you click on the 'Translate' button, you are redirected to the tool that Google uses to translate a page. The user interface of techedIN remains as it is. Only the content gets translated. 
2. Another feature I liked is the option to view random posts. Click on the Random Post button and it will take you to one of the posts on techedIN which you would have otherwise missed out, as it is archived.
3. The toolbar can also give you a list of recent posts. One click and you get a list of recent posts. Click on the one you want to read and it will take you there.
4. The toolbar also has options to let readers subscribe to the RSS Feed or share a post with a community. 
5. Wibiya also gives you an option to share notifications with your readers. It is a flash pop-up that shows up as you load the blog. I toyed with the idea of using it as a pop-up always annoys readers. I thought I wouldn't use it. I changed my mind when I saw how effectively it can be used to interact with the readers. I have adapted the notification pop-up [I don't know if I should call it a pop up. It is a flash-object that shows up as the blog loads and goes off on its own in a few seconds.] I christened the pop-up as 'News @ techedIN' I thought it can be used to share IT related news that I find interesting with the readers. No harm in it, what do you think?

 Wibiya also gives you features like creating a Blog Community on Facebook and promoting it on your blog. I decided against using that feature for now, as I do not have enough time in my hand to promote a community.

You can also let readers tweet your posts. I decided against using it as I already have retweet option enabled for the posts on my blog.

What more? Wibiya has a community to help users tackle the toolbar management issues.

And I really liked the way it looks on my blog. I received my first compliment from a reader for making the blog look good, after I installed the toolbar.

I think you should go ahead and give it a shot. And don't forget to tell me what you felt about it!

Image from Wibiya's Site

Crisis Phobia and "The Top 100 Search Terms Queried by Kids"

I remember a Professor of mine who used to always call our attention to the 'crisis phobea' some writers try to spread. I don't know if you have ever noticed some writers going about their job as though the world is going to end if you don't listen to them. I remembered my Professor and his long lectures on the perpetrators of crisis phobia when I read OnlineFamily.Norton's list of  top 100 terms kids search on-line.

Top 100 Search Terms Queried by Kids? Do you know what they are? There is everything from YouTube to Google to Face Book to Michael Jackson to Pokemon to you name what you consider popular with kids on net and they are there! Take a look at it and at first it appears to be a very innocent list. But wait a second! Is it as innocent as Norton is trying to sound?

There are some search terms in the list  that can be very disturbing where parents are concerned. Sex is fourth in the list. Porn is sixth in the list. And at least four more 'taboo' words occur on the list. And the write up does not mention the age levels of the children who would have searched these words while they were surfing. It simply gives you a general list of 100 search terms and of course a note to many of them in case parents sat wondering what they were.

Norton claims that they tracked down 3.5 million searches and a search term had to be submitted at least 50 times to qualify as a 'kids' top search term.' See how they are trying to validate their findings in the best way possible. And Norton says [See the crisis words stressed using inverted comas]:

According to OnlineFamily.Norton, kids’ top 100 search terms include sites like YouTube, eBay and Craigslist, as well as social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. The words “sex” and “porn” also made it to the top, ranking number four and six respectively.

And one clearly understands that the post target parents as there are explanations to most of the search terms used. Why did they do it? Of course we know - they have this OneFamily Child Protection, Net Filtering Software to sell. Yah, the one like China's Green Dam. And this report shows us even they can keep track of what you are doing with your PC, like Green Dam.

Please don't get me wrong! I do not endorse children visiting pornographic sites. I do not endorse adults visiting pornographic sites even. Because most of these sites spread malware, viruses and spyware. It is not healthy for your computer if you visit them. And to make sure that your personal information like passwords and credit card number are safe, you need to make sure that spyware and malware do not infest your PC or MAC. And I know kids sometimes tend to visit such sites out of curiosity and in turn gets the computer affected. And perhaps, it is good to have a Site Filtering System on your computer.

However, that does not justify the the way Norton has tried to scare poor parents into buying their software. [Ya, it is free now! But what about later?] It does not justify their attempt to generalize search terms and make it look like 'kids are as pervert as adults' I would not have bothered if they gave a reference to the age level of children. But they have made the list look like every kid from a toddler to a teenager needs to be closely watched like police watches a suspect, every time they go on-line. I can not agree with the idea that they collect user data [which is personal] and publish it on-line and try to make that a selling point!

Print Screen Image from Norton's Site

Twibbon: Is it just about wearing a badge?

Now doubt Twitter is becoming a phenomenon on-line. And the number of sites that survive because of Twitter are increasing. Earlier I wrote about Twitterfeed, a service that allow you to post your feeds automatically to your Twitter Page. Another one I recently came across is Twibbon. Twibbon is about wearing a badge to show off your affiliation. But is Twibbon only about wearing a badge?

The habit of wearing an E-badge is becoming very popular these days. There are sites that force you to wear a badge to show your affiliation. There a badge is nothing more than a reciprocal link. You link me because I linked you is bad on-line attitude.



Twibbon takes E-badges to a new level. People wear a badge to support a cause. IE6 Must Die was a cause that many Twitter users supported and made popular that it trended on Twitter for a long time. When the King of Pop passed away, people who mourned the sad demise wore a black badge on their profile and Jackson trended on Twitter like never before. Along with the Badge, Twibbon sends out a tweet on the person wearing the badge. It is actually a link to the location of the badge so that other people can come and claim a badge for their profile if they care. It is viral, viral and viral all the way.

I am always of the opinion that Internet is more about marketing than 'information' Of course it is a good way to gather and process information. But it is more about companies gathering information about what people are looking for when. No wonder why most of the services online, like search and social networking, come free of cost to the users.

Twibbon is another way of finding out what people are interested in, when. Twibbon lets you take a closer look at 'what people want', a degree higher than search engines, because people wear a badge usually because they are emotionally attached to something. And I am happy that they don't keep that information to themselves like most of the search engine companies do.

In short, Twibbon, like What the Trend is a great market research tool. I think it can go a long way by helping marketing wiz kids to formulate their strategies. Internet is mostly about Attention Economy now. And Twibbon is only about that.

Photo from Twibbon

The USAA Example: Online Banking takes another step forward!

It has been a while now since banking moved on-line and went almost mobile. Most of the banks in India give us options to do on-line transactions and use our mobile phones to keep track of what is happening with the accounts. With a bank in USA moving ahead and permitting customers to deposit their checks on-line, using their iPhones, I think it is another step forward. I feel, since banks are trying everything they can to make banking a more comfortable experience for account holders, this is soon going to come to India too. So if it comes to Indian Banks, it means you don't have to apply for a casual leave to go to the bank and sit in the queue to deposit a check.

How is this on-line check depositing done? Here, I have got this video from the bank in question, as posted on YouTube and it explains how it is done:


I am happy that core banking services are moving more on-line. And economics experts are right, in a way the global economic melt down is for good reasons. We are going to see a lot of customer centric innovations happening at every level.

But I am not happy with the fact that it is first launched on iPhone. Why? Because, lately Apple is acting very strange and stifling innovations. It took Google Voice away from its store and thus denied American users an opportunity to save a few pennies on phone calls. I know that businesses are not run for charity. But my point is, denying an opportunity to save something during this huge economic meltdown is an economic crime and Apple has done that. Now,I feel, nothing innovative should be first launched on Apple  here after. Apple should be the last one to get a taste of the innovations by other people because of their stone age policies about promoting innovations on-line.

How does Rainlendar help me?

I some times think that my brain is like a laptop that runs Windows Vista on a 512 MB RAM. Simply because, I keep forgetting things! Important things!

I tried many things to keep my 'brain' in the loop of what is happening. Initially I tired writing things to remember in a diary, different colours for different things. I stopped doing that when I started forgetting where I left the diary. Then I tried post it notes. They really proved to be expensive.

Google Calendar came to my rescue for some time. They have this option to send you an e-mail or sms alarm, which worked really fine. The only problem with Google Calendar was that my scheduling got messed up if there was no internet around. And Google gives an Offline Option that doesn't work when there is no Internet.

Microsoft Outlook became my companion for sometime. The problem with Outlook is that I have to manually open it every time I switched my computer on and there are days when I forget to do that.

I tried the gadgets Google Desktop offered. There was a Gadget called 'To do List' The only problem with this Gadget was that it could never tell me when to do what. And as the list kept growing every day, it added to my frustrations.

I was always hunting for a Calendar that offered me the following:

• I needed a calendar that will open on it's own as soon as I switched my computer on.
• I needed a preview of the calendar on my desktop
• It must have an alarm going off every time I am supposed to do something
• It must not scare me with a long list of tasks to do. Yet. I need to look at the immediate tasks any time I want to with a quick glance at my desktop
• It must allow me to prioritize and categorize so that sometimes one look at the icon assigned to a task and I must be able to know what I am supposed to do.
• It must be intelligent enough to differentiate between events and tasks.
• When I bring my mouse over a date, it must tell me everything about the date. I need every little information about the date.

And I spotted Rainlendar. Rainlendar is a desktop calendar. But I would say it is more than a desktop calnedar to me now. Because it somehow meets all my standards. And to my joy, it lets me link to my Google Calendar. I am talking about the Rainlendar Pro Version. Linking to Google Calendar helps me avoid duplication of entry. What ever I enter on my Google Calendar is good enough for Rainlendar, once I synchronize.

What more do I need. Yeh, I didn't like the way it looked. That is not a problem. Rainlendar got skins that I can use. If I am still not happy with the skins that I have by default, I can go to Custiomize.org and pick the skins I like. I tried a couple of them and found that the one that I have by default suited my taste better than any other skin.

The best thing I liked about Rainlendar is the Mouse Over Feature. If I bring my mouse pointer over a scheduled date it tells me everything I keyed in as I was blocking the date. Every bit of details. If I roll my mouse pointer over a date on Outlook or Google Calendar date, they'll just tell me the title of the event. I need to click to go see details about the event. I think some one as lazy as me about clicking the mouse created Rainlendar. Which ever way, I like my new Desktop Calendar.

Google buying On2: What difference does it make?

Yesterday, in a Press Release Google and On2 announced that Google is finally acquiring On2 Technologies Inc., a leading developer of video compression technology. On2 is about 'creating and delivering high quality video over IP networks." Google is also about Youtube, we know. And it is a $ 106. 5 million deal they say. 'Each outstanding share of On2 common stock will be converted into $0.60 worth of Google class A common stock in a stock-for-stock transaction,' according to the Press Release. What difference is it going to make, if Google acquires On2?

Now, experts say the game is all about video codecs. Video codes enable video compression and On2 makes them. VP6, VP 7 etc are high defenition, high quality video codecs, developed by On2, used in Adobe Flash Player, Web2.0, VoIP, mobile video and other embedded devices.. But at present, VP6 and VP7 are losing out in the game to H.264, which comes under GNU General Public License. That means H.264 comes under free licence and people have the freedom to modify and distribute it. VP6 is a licensed codec and expects companies to pay a licence fee every year. VP6 of course is about quality videos. And people hope and pray that Google makes it open source.

What happens if Google makes VP6 open source?

1. Companies like Adobe,AOL, Skype, Nokia, XM Satellite Radio, Sony, Yamaha, TI, LSI Logic, Analog Devices, VideoEgg, Brightcove, Cox, Naver.com (Korea), Daum (Korea), Tencent(China) etc, who are already using VP6 will continue using it and building on it for free, without having to pay licence fee to On2. This means they come back to use the more superior VP6 and we can forget H.264. Quality of videos across platforms will improve.
2. HTML5 is on the way and it will enable browsers to handle videos without the help of plugins like Flash Player or Silverlight. This will help developers stop bothering about a lot of software compatiability issues. It will also help users save a lot of hard drive space, as plugins need not be downloaded.  
3. Mobile phone users will be able to send their MMS Videos to other mobile phones, without the fear of losing quality.   
4. People who do Video Conferencing using Webcams can then start thinking about videos that are viewable and not distorted as they are these days. 

Google can go ahead and not open source On2 video codecs at all. What happens then? Apple has its QuickTime. Microsoft has its Silverlight. Adobe has its Flash. And Google has what it takes to give them the foundation - VP6 and VP7. This means, at one point or the other, these biggies will end up paying licence fees to Google. This sale was a smart move, wasn't it?

What did I learn selling my friend's cell phone!

Cell phones are good things. But sometimes they can turn out to be a pain in the neck. My friend's Sony Ericson Z555i turned out to be one such disaster. It had a fascinating look, as though it was made out of crystals. But my friend realized looks can deceive. The phone was never loud or clear, the way Sony Ericson Phones are usually expected to be. It behaved in different ways at different times. Sometimes it was loud and sometimes it never made a noise even if some one called you. It had an option where you could just wave your hand on the phone and make it silent when it rang. But that rarely worked. I used to see my friend waving his hand on the phone in desperation when it rang and it just wouldn't listen. And my friend decided to sell the thing off and get a new one.

Sell the cell phone! And I joined in. That was when we learned a few things about the 'second-hand' phone market out there. Let me share a few of the things we have learned with you:

1. After you start using a phone, don't throw the box it came in away. Phones with the packages they come in, with all the bits and pieces of paper that came along with it, can fetch you a lot more than a phone with no box.
2. Keep the bill. Phones with bills are easy to sell.
3. Don't buy phones that you can flap shut or slide open. They look good and stylish, I agree. But 'second-hand' phone dealers look at them like a piece of good for nothing crap. If your phone is one piece, people will buy.
4. When you buy a phone in India and you want to sell it later, buy a Nokia Phone. No, I am not campaigning for Nokia here. I know many of the Nokia phones suck equally when it comes to performance. But in the Indian 'second-hand' market, Noika Cell Phones are revered than any one. So are some of the Sony Ericson models, only if they are in single piece.
5. Go to at least five or six 'second-hand' dealers, before you get rid of 'that-bloody-thing'. You will gain a sense of how much you can ask for your piece of trash.
6. Make sure that your phone is working, at least for the time the 'dealer guy' is going to check it and certify it. If the phone malfunctions, as the guy is checking, you are doomed. The price can come down drastically. 
7. Make sure that you know the model number of your phone and when it was thrown into the market. Sometimes, these people can tell you that it is an old and useless model and will not fetch you much. The more you know about your phone, the better.

After all the hardships we had to go through to sell off the Z555i, my friend decided one thing. He is not going after the look and style any more. Before buying a new phone for him, we went and saw many models. Talked to people who knows about mobile phones. We identified a few good models, came back to look at reviews on them in different 'product review sites'. Once we went back and decided which phone to buy, we checked when and where the phone was made. [Made in China is strictly a 'no no' and Manufactured four or five months ago is again a 'no no' ] Made sure that we have a warranty or guarantee for all the bits and pieces of the phone, including the battery, the charger and the ear phone, at least for a year. [Now remember, the dealer would say there is Guarantee for all the stuff in the cell phone box. But sometimes he may not put his seal on all the papers related to Guarantee. Make sure that you have the dealer's seal and signature on the guarantee cards.] We insisted that the sales guy gave us a live demo of the phone. Made sure that it had all the features we wanted. And then bought the new one. 

Worth the trouble. A few minutes ago, my friend called me and said that 'the phone is good'. By the way, it is another Sony Ericson. I wish it would remain so for as long as he wants.

Google Launches Google Calendar Labs

Google Calendar is one good application so far from the Google Guys. It has always helped me organize my time and space, officially and unofficially. Features like email reminders and sms reminders, calendar sharing and the possibility of managing multiple calenders are all useful.

Nothing is ever enough for people at Google and they proved it yet again by introducing Google Calendar Labs. Gmail has Labs. So does Google Docs. And now they have Google Calendar Labs. Right now they have six new features running in the Google Calendar Labs and I hope many more are on the way.

Of the six features, I liked Attach Google Docs, Next Meeting and Free or Busy.

Attach Google Docs: This feature allows you to attach documents to an event. Guests can automatically view the presentation, spreadsheet or word processing document you attach to an event. I hope Google will soon come up with a way to attach documents saved on my system and will start supporting any format.

Next Meeting: I would say this is one cool feature that can come in handy, in case you are a person who has the habit of working it out backwards. The feature shows up on one side of your calendar. I hope Google will enable this feature in their Google Calendar Desktop Gadget too.

Free or Busy: This feature comes in handy if you have a calendar shared and needs to coordinate with people a lot. All that you got to do is enter the email address of the person concerned. If the person uses Google Calendar, you can keep track of their availability and plan your schedules accordingly. I think this is one feature that should stay.

Of course, these features are still in Lab and I know it will take a while for it to be a part of the actual Google Calendar. But I don't mind using them, even if they may act smarter than me sometimes and don't work at all. From my experience with Google for the last five or six years I have found, even their Lab Versions are reliable and work perfectly fine most of the time. And Google has certain features in Lab longer than any software company does so that by the time it comes out we have an almost perfect application. Please try these features and tell me what you think.

Images from Google Calendar

My tryst with 4 Shared!

Of course, whenever I want to find something I go to Google, like most of you do! I type in what I want Google to find out for me, hit search and wait. 75% of the time the Google Guys come up with what I am looking for. I did the same thing when I wanted to find out if some of the songs I liked were available for download.

Let me tell you, for most of my favourite songs, Google was a disaster. Of course Google gave me what it thought are the most relevant of all the results. But that was not the point! I wanted to download these songs. But Google took me to many sites that do not have a download link. [I am not sure if that is a part of Google Policy!] Most of them had a link to another site where, I was told, I could download the song I was looking for. The site that the link took me to had a link to another site that allowed me to download the song. It was a never ending line of cross links! Exasperated!

That was when I stumbled upon 4Shared. It is an online storage system, where you can store and share your files. It lets you store any kind of file and has got a 100 GB file storage option, if you are a paying member. You are right, you can be only a paid member on 4Shared. The free membership lasts only for 30 days.

What I liked about 4Shared is not the fact that I can store my files online. I live in India, and in spite of being one of the prominent IT hubs, we are not always sure if we can access Internet all the time. So I prefer to store my files on my computer and not anywhere else. If I have to share files and collaborate, I already have a Google Docs Account. I don't usually upload anything other than Office Documents and Goolge Docs is the only people I trust with my Office Documents.

What I liked about 4Shared is not the fact that it permitted me to log in using my Google Id. Now, I don't use my Google Id to log in on any site for the fear of spam and hackers. I'll not use my Google Id unless I know Google approves 4Shared. Even if I use my Google Id to log in, I know that my honeymoon with 4Shared is going to last only for the 30 Days Trial Period. Because, the way things are, I don't have a credit card or pay pal account to pay 4 Shared.

Following are a few things I liked about 4Shared:

1. I liked 4Shared because it permitted me to download shared files even without a membership and logging in.
2. It tells me that the file is virus free, so at least for time being I don't have a virus-phobia when downloading from 4Shared.
3. It keeps the downloading simple. I didn't have to worry about where a link on 4Shared would take me to! It was almost like I know where I was going. They have kept the user interface neat, straightforward and simple.
4. It has a cool search engine. I don'y know if Google powers it. But I know that using the search on 4Shared I could find many of the songs and videos I wanted.
5. It gives you a preview option. You can see your videos or hear your songs before you download them.

I don't know if 4Shared has enough Premium Members to cover their expenses. But I know that I got most of the songs I wanted!