I have subscribe to the Google network a fair bit. This means that I use

1. Gmail as my main email client
2. Google Reader as my main RSS feeds reader
3. Google Calendar as my consolidated calendar
4. Google Contacts as my main contact manager

The advantage of subscribing to Google’s cloud services or network, or whatever you want to call it is that

1. It is extensible. You can link data to your data easier than other platform. You can export data away from Google should you feel dis-satisfied with it
2. Because it is extensible and API is open to developers, many desktop,smartphone and other native device developers can build applications to increase productivity and performance
3. Google continues to innovate in their products to accommodate to a large number of users with different ways of calendaring, contacts management, reading and managing email

But the downside for using Google’s product

1. The look is always very ugly compare to Microsoft and Yahoo’s offering
2. Because applications are always in Beta, some people will feel turn off about experimental things and why it doesn’t have certain features

Google have taken a lot of efforts to address the UGLY portion. In the last year, their web applications and Android and iPhone applications have undergone a drastic beautifying.

Now there is a consistent minimalist white theme for almost all their applications. They have cut out a lot of the clutter and have given enough whitespace to enable the user to focus on the right subject.

Good user interface attracts users to come back and want to use it, and the more a person use it, it enhances them better.

The new Gmail resizes better when you change it to a smaller window. The email conversations look better with the picture of the person you are talking to next to it and overall feels more like a chat conversation.

The problem with Google Reader had been that it always look strange and its really not great at focusing on what matters – the content! This redesign removes a lot of the boundaries and ensures the user sees clearly between controls and content.

There is also a tighter integration with Google Plus which is good to grow the Google Plus social network. The more ways you make it easier for info sharing the more it becomes important.

What do you guys think? Do you like the new changes?

If you are a fan of streaming English subtitled Animes, you would enjoy the use case of

1. Watching Anime in between commuting
2. Not having to bother about downloads
3. Watch for Free

Now we know that sites like

1. Anime Shippuuden
2. Anilinkz

Aggregates Anime episodes so that you can stream and watch English version of them. But can you stream and watch them from  your smartphone over 3G?

I believe you cannot do it for iPhone or iPad because Flash does not work on iOS platform. However, that’s where Android comes in because you can stream from a mobile browser window to watch these Anime.

What I tried was to watch an episode of Gundam Age on my Samsung Galaxy S2. The superior performance of the phone, plus the Dolphin browser makes the whole process rather enjoyable.

How do you guys find this use case?

If you want a quick and concise guide how to setup iCloud on your iOS devices and how you can access them on your Windows 7 desktop here is a great guide at Inspired Geek that teaches that

[Setup iCloud on iOS, Windows PC >]

To me this is long belated, since Android and Google was able to do that a few iterations ago.

Many would assume that you can just go to your iOS device > Settings > General > iTunes Wi-Fi Sync and you will be able to sync.

This is not the case. You would have to set it up the first time.

1. Make sure you are in the same Wi-Fi network as your Mac, Windows Computer. If you are not on the same network you cannot sync!
2. Plug in the iPhone cable to sync.
3. On your device in iTunes you should see Options > Sync with this iPad over Wi-Fi. Check this option.
4. Click Apply.
5. Unplug the cable and go to iOS device > Settings > General > iTunes Wi-Fi Sync to test it.

Wi-Fi improves your efficiency massively.

The Apple iPhone 4S presentation was largely a disappointment for a lot of folks, but for me the highlight was SIRI, the personal digital voice assistant.

Voice recognition is not something new. Google’s Android have this in their Android to replace text input or carry out search.

But Apple’s presentation looks really neat. Apparently I found out that SIRI exist as a startup before Apple decided to integrate this into their OS after buying over. 

But can Android do something similar as well?

1. It integrates narration of incoming text messages when put into a narration mode. Android has that too but its not integrated this way.
2. Replies to text message through voice. Android is not integrated this way yet.
3. Switches application context from text messaging to music playlist through voice command.
4. Understands that you are currently in an application context and continues to be in that application context.

Till today Android have VLingo which does the same thing. It is free over at Android Market and well rated.[Get it here]

SIRI actually marries 2 concepts

1. Instead of text commands to invoke switching between apps, it users voice. For text command apps on the desktop do take a look at Google Calendar’s Quick Add Feature [illustration here]
2. SIRI maintains a set of voice commands. These voice commands could be 5 different voice sets to bring you to a single application context such as Reminders or Calendar, as we bring it up differently.
3. SIRI then marries this with your own variable data input.
4. The second powerful concept is the AI to recognize voice and translate to data or commands better than the competitors

Why SIRI is better than Android’s current offering is the AI portion is really well worked out.

1. SIRI started off in 2003 as CALO, a DARPA funded project with 300 researchers. It has 8 years of development and a lot of money invested. Basically Apple is now bring a really advance voice to text and text to voice AI system to the mainstream consumers.
2. The system will clarify after voice input to make sure you send or input something according to what you want.
3. The conversion from units or time zones is going to be a very big feature.
4. Integration with Wolfram Alpha as well.

The question now is that as Asians, not all of us have English names. In past voice recognition systems this have been a problem.

Will SIRI be a racist application? We will only find out when we get hold of one and try it.

The next question is: How is Microsoft and Google’s technology in this voice recognition area? Will they be able to compete?

It helps that Apple’s product is so simple to understand and do what you tell them to.

Now that cannot be said for Google’s ecosystem. Sure they are ubiquitous and good to use, however they don’t grab you in a way Apple’s products does.

I recently stepped outside the cozy Apple ecosystem and purchased an Android phone, theHTC Desire. It was on sale at a steep discount, and I thought I would be able to integrate itinto my work/life flow. I was wrong, and the phone is being returned.

The phone was powerful, and had some very interesting features, but it was so entirely different from the rest of my Mac setup that nothing felt right. I could go into detail about application crashes, frustrating hardware, the sordid Android Market (I wouldn’t let my kids browse through it), and other annoyances, but suffice to say that it simply didn’t measure up to the expectations I’ve developed from using Apple devices.

Apple is the only computer company that creates all of its own hardware and software; they control the entire package. Personal computers are a mishmash of parts and pieces from different sources. Hardware from one company, software from another. By contrast, many modern smartphone and computer makers get hardware from one place, and an operating system from another. BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion is a notable exception to this rule, but a recent interview with their co-CEO Mike Lazaridis seems to suggest the company’s leadership at least has little sense of what smartphone consumers really want.

[Read the full article here >>]

I think I have commented enough on why I think Android’s model is faulty and that is why its is not a good productive device.

But I never expected that someone could be in such an agreement with my views until I found this post by John Gruber from Daring Fireball.

John, being a first and foremost iPhone and iPad user, takes a stab at why the Android just did not work for him.

It shocks me that many of his points is what I feel hits the nail on the head what is wrong with the platform. He is not an apple fanatic and he draws enough examples from other platforms as well.

Critics of both Apple and Google should take a look at this.

Here is a summary of his argument:

1. The quality of Android apps not the quantity

I’ve complained, numerous times, about the “how many total apps are in your store?” metric — the idea that Apple is “winning” because there are more iOS apps than there are apps for any other mobile platform. If quantity of app titles were all that mattered, we’d all be using Windows, not Mac OS X, right? Having the most apps matters, but having the best apps matters too. The sweet spot for a platform is to do well in both regards.

Quantity of titles is, in some way, a measure of a platform’s strength. But what I care about are the great apps. Where are the great, or even good, exclusive third-party apps for Android?

Popular third-party Android apps clearly tend to be of a decidedly lower design quality than popular iOS apps. (The key word in that sentence is popular — let’s concede that the majority of all apps, at the unpopular end of the long tail both in the iTunes App Store and Android Market, are junk.)

Not all popular third-party Android apps are sub-par, design-wise. But those that are well-designed, in most cases, are the ones which are not exclusive to Android. And the ones that are both exclusive to Android and well-designed, from what I’ve seen, seem to be apps that only make sense on Android, insofar as they wouldn’t be allowed in the App Store.

Compare and contrast with the library of exclusive games for iOS. Just in the past few days alone, I’ve bought three new exclusive iOS games, any one of which would surely beat any of the exclusive Android games on Ahlund’s list of all-time best ones: Astronut from The Iconfactory, Rage HD from Id Software, and Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner from LucasArts. (Total cost for all three games: $9.) That games of this caliber are all exclusive to iOS is, arguably, the biggest hole in the argument that Android is to iOS what Windows was to the Mac. Say what you want about the quality edge that Mac software holds over Windows, but Windows has always had the games.

2. Where are the killer third party apps exclusive to Android?

Let’s sort all Android apps into the following categories:

1. Apps from Google.
2. Third-party apps that also exist on iOS.
3. Third-party apps that are exclusive to Android.

From my time spent with the Nexus One early this year, I know that Google’s Android apps are pretty good. These include both the core system apps, and the closed-source “Google Experience” apps like the dedicated Gmail client and Google Maps.

There are definitely a fair number of apps in the second category — those ported to both iOS and Android. Examples: Amazon’s Kindle client, Pandora, and a few popular games, such as Angry Birds and Doodle Jump.

But what I find striking is that the apps in the third category — those exclusive to Android — are almost entirely unappealing or irrelevant to iOS users.

3. Top Apps on Android are things to manage the phone!

In the free list, the top five apps are all available for iOS,² or, in the case of #5, Barcode Scanner, have equivalent if not superior iOS alternatives. The first app in the list that’s exclusive to Android is #6, Lookout — an anti-virus app.

In the paid list, Android exclusives include Root Explorer (a file system manager), Advanced Task Manager (a process monitor/killer), a collection of home screen widgets, SetCPU for Root Users (a hack for overclocking your device’s CPU), and CacheMate for Root Users (for manually managing system caches). Spot a trend?

In fact, the Android Market, as a whole, bears a lot more resemblance to the Cydia app store than it does to Apple’s official App Store. This is both in terms of content (system hacks, geek utilities, lower-quality UI design) and audience (the sort of users who put “task killers” and home screen replacements at the top of their favorite app lists). Browse the Android Market apps listed at sites like DoubleTwist and AppBrain, particularly the most popular lists. Then browse the listings in the Cydia app store, and tell me there isn’t a strong similarity.

The mere existence of things like task killers and anti-virus apps for Android — let alone that such utilities are popular — erodes consumer trust. Inherent to the console model is that third-party software can’t — not shouldn’t but can’t — damage or gum up the system.

4. Android not meshing the right model compare to iOS

When you think about competition between platforms in other fields, like game consoles — Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo — there’s a strong correlation between device sales, developer support for the platform, and software sales. In mobile computing, it’s not so much that there’s no correlation between hardware sales and the app market, but that there really is only one console-like app market: Apple’s.

1. Apple has carefully constructed iOS and the iTunes App Store to support this “app console” model.

2. Developers, large and small, have swarmed to Apple’s app console model, with consumer-friendly apps, design, presentation, and pricing.

3. iOS users understand the app console model and have embraced it — both in terms of a willingness to look for and install apps, and a willingness to pay for them.

None of those three things are true for Android.

I spoke to a source at a very successful iOS game development shop earlier this week, regarding the company’s plans for Android. According to my source, the company is investigating skipping the Android Market entirely, and working out exclusivity deals with handset makers to bundle games on Android phones.

iOS’s exclusivity for a bunch of big-name mobile games — Need for Speed Undercover, Star Wars: Battle for Hoth, Monopoly, Tetris, The Sims, Assassin’s Creed — has been broken. Not by Android, where none of these games exist, but by Windows Phone 7, a one-month-old platform.

I urge folks interested in such debate to view the original article

[Full Article here >>]

1. Dogfooding: We use iPhones ourselves.
2. Installed base: A ton of other people already have iPhones.
3. Profitability: There’s potentially a lot of money in iPhone apps.

[Read the full article here >>]

What does Aro do? If, say, Bill Gates sends Steve Jobs an email, copies me, and is talking about Larry Ellison, Larry’s name will have a little square around it. Click on that square and a new UI fans out, letting me see other info. It’s like Rapportive or Xobni, but done much better and for the mobile interface. It makes your phone much more productive than it would be otherwise and that’s why I feel it’s so important.

Think of it as a semantics crawler. If you have an email it will crawl the contents and intelligently come up with things that you will do with the information

1. location of a eatery outlet without exiting the client
2. make an appointment on Google Calendar without exiting the client
3. add a contact in your email without exiting the client
4. take a name in your email and find if this person was emailed, was in the meeting with me involved.
5. basically take all your meetings, contacts, emails and make a social graph to provide you a lot of shortcuts
6. help you tag this image to facebook, flicker.
7. make it easier for you to create calendar appointments.

Take a look at this video:

I own an iPod Touch 3G 32GB and used to own an iPod Touch 2G 8GB. The iPod touch to me is a great organizer because

1. You can get many productivity apps off the App Store to enhance you.
2. It makes a great music player. Its DSP is comparable with many of today’s portable devices sans those produced by Cowon
3. It’s a great video player
4. It’s a great youtube video player
5. Its an on the go browser that is very responsive
6. It’s a great game player

But the thing is that many competitors are always trying to gain market share at the expense of Apple and all this while their products are cheap and work just as well.

Archos just released 5 Android Devices with the cheapest 2.8 inch going for USD99.

My take is only for the 8GB because that is the entry level iPod I feel matters most to budget conscious consumers. In the past, the 8GB segment have always been the segment that Apple did not upgrade to the latest generation’s technology. Not anymore.

Great Screen Resolution and Retina Display

If you are going to stare at something for a lot of time a day, you would want something that makes what you look at pleasing.

The retina display  at 326ppi will make most of the things you view on your iPod Touch 4G to be fuller than without it.

The resolution on the 4G is also increased to 960×640 from 480 x 320. This is gonna be a wall of difference in terms of details that developers can size their images and texts.

For a user, you can expect more high quality applications compared to the Tablets or PMP players from Android or webOS.

You will see that there  are many tablets that offer big sizes such as 7 inch or 5 inch yet their resolution stays at 480 x 320 or at most 800 x 600. This is not making full use of the screen size.

Perhaps the cost of producing LCD at high resolution is much higher and they would not be able to hit this pricing point.

Very good performance processor

Compare to other webOS or Android devices, it is imperative that the processor is good so that normal interaction with the gadget does not irked the user.

A lot of China made Android devices ran off poor processors such as the Rockchip 2808 or the Telechip and it just shows off how good the iPod Touch in experience is much better than these gadgets.

The A4 Cortex A8 is the same chip used in the iPhone 4G and iPad. For that pricing we got a really good processor here to handle great gaming and intensive processing applications.

Very Reasonable Pricing

What Apple does well is to test the full user experience and sell it to you. At times we complain that their price is expensive. Like those of the Mac Powerbook and Desktops.

But USD229 for the 8GB is a great price to gain access to a lot of great applications, portable media player, camera and gaming console.

Yes it is more  expensive then some other device but when you compare the user experiences, they just don’t measure up.

… And now for the factors that don’t

Small Display

For a gaming and media playing device, 3.5 inch is so small! Perhaps that is why they are able to keep their price points.

The right screen size could be 5 inch. That to me is the sweet spot.

Battery Life

The battery life for the ipod have always fared worse then their iPhone brothers. The problem is that you are still doing much intensive things over WIFI.

My iPod Touch battery can be drain in 1-2 hours if I use 1-2 intensive applications.

Greater battery life increases the production cost as well. And many china manufacturers knows that.  Many of them may have good specs but the battery life just make the whole experience degrading.

Unable to use in Secured Sites

One of the main reason for getting the iPod Touch is that it serves as a good organizer in areas where we cannot bring camera devices.

With 2 cameras, a lot of folks will not look to the iPod Touch as a PDA to bring to these places.

Conclusion

So the big question is whether I will be upgrading. The answer is a firm no because its got not one but 2 cameras.

The 8GB devices is very attractively priced at USD 229 which comes up to SGD 318. No different then the price when I first bought my iPod Touch 2G

I must say I am really dissappointed with the move to include camera but that can’t be help as most consumers want that and only a small minority of us doesn’t want that.