The Nexus aka new cool Google phone

I met with a friend the other day and had an opportunity to play with the new Nexus.

In short the phone is absolutely AWESOME! I was never a fan of the iPhone. Don’t get me wrong. The iPhone is really cool, but the fact that it is an Apple product and that the AppStore is completely useless has put me off getting one.

Some of the things that make the Nexus better, in my opinion, are listed here:

-The Google version of the ‘AppStore’ loads in about 500ms and the interface is a lot better than the one provided by Apple.
-The screen is a lot better. And by a lot better I mean going from a 1990s Liquid Plasma TV to a 2010 OLED HD TV.
-Look and feel: The iPhone looks and feels like a toy. If you have a droid or a blackberry it screams business. The Nexus has that business feel and look, but is just as much (if not more fun) than and iPhone

I’m seriously looking forward to getting one!

The train rant ends

The train rant begins.

The train rant continues.

The idiocy of trains:

My beef isn’t with the train, which is a fantastic piece of engineering and ingenuity. What I have issues with is the fact that the green party (not in any particular country, mind, just take your pick) seem to think that train is the solution and future of all public and personal transport.

Rubibsh.

That is the biggest load of crock I have heard in my life. A train needs tracks. The biggest rival the train has to contend with is the car. A car works best if used on roads. Note the difference between NEEDS, implying that without tracks the train doesn’t work, and WORKS BEST, implying that the road is a helpfull accessory. So the real issue isn’t really the car versus the train it is roads(optional) versus tracks.

Infrastructure is expensive. Building and maintaining roads is expensive. Laying and maintaining tracks, more so. The real weakness in the economy of tracks however becomes apparant when we enter the less populated regions. A single carridgeway is omni-directional. A single set of tracks on the other hand isn’t. Two trains heading in opposite directions will have a hard time negotiating past one another. One option is to have a rigourous schedule and stick to it, and have set spots where trains can meet and pass each other. This completely rules out the concept of “personal trains”, which was recently put forth by a green party as a serious suggestion.

The solution then, would be to have two sets of tracks. Which is the point where the economy of the railway is out the window. Instead of one single carridgeway, you need not one, but two, sets of more expensive infrastructure. Brilliant.

Next is the issue of a breakdown. A car stalling on the motorway is not the best thing in the world, but in the worst case, you close a lane and there is a bit of a jam. If a train gives up on the tracks, well anything coming up behind it is stuck until it is mended or removed… and you can only ever go as fast as whatever is infront of you. Wonderful. It’s like being stuck behind a volvo pulling a camper doing 40, but with no way to overtake. Ever. That would be a very nice version of purgatory.

If you are still entertaining the possibility that a railway based transportation system is a good idea, then no matter what I say, you won’t change your mind. Since you are obviously an idiot in the truest sense of the word. People don’t want to give up flexibility even if you tell them the environment is being destroyed. However, give people a financial incentive and create a demand for hydrogen and electric cars the supply will follow. The performance and effectivness of those machines are not even close to a combustion engine powered vehicle. The trick is to put it into context.

Compare a car to an electric car. Car wins. Compare an electric car to anything that runs on rails, or with pedals, and an electric car is a wonderful thing. The best part is, we can use the roads we already have!

The Train Rant Continues

This is where the train rant begins.

Surprise, I’m still on the train with zero things to do. I have not been able to come up with a brilliant solution to my small problem of not being able to watch the movies I copied from my desktop. Not awesome.
So I have established that it’s Microsoft’s and the computer companies’ fault in general. However, that is not the end of it. There may be nobody else to blame for causing my predicament, but I sure as hell can rant down a list of parties responsible for making sure I have no way to solve my problem from where I am right now.
I’ll start with the Deutsche Bahn. Why can’t they just get with the times and provide WiFi connectivity on trains? If it were free, that would be great. If I had to pay for it, at this point, I wouldn’t care. However, since Germany seems to want to be stuck in the dark ages there isn’t even a pay-for-it-but-only-in-first-class option.
Mobile Internet is awesome, and would have been the most useful thing in the world to me right now. Infact, if I had that I wouldn’t even be in this mess, because I would be surfing around and probably looking for the end of the Internet. On the other hand, had I been so inclined, I could have downloaded the codecs I’m missing, or VLC Media Player, or simply just watched stuff on YouTube. As mentioned, though, Germany seems content with the dark ages. There is mobile Internet here in Germany, sort of, but I haven’t gotten it yet because I don’t see the point.
No, not true. I will rephrase: I didn’t use to see the point. I was blind, but now I see.
So why don’t I see a point in getting mobile Internet in Germany. Well, fact of the matter is, it’s pretty simple. Too expensive, too slow, bad coverage and above all it’s limited. If you go for one of the nice cheap packages (designed for idiots using pre-droid phones) you pay around €10/month. Which is very reasonable, until you look at what that gets you. Top connection speed of around 80Kb/s and an embarrassing 1GB worth of data traffic. Well, let’s face it. With a speed of 80Kb/s you would be hard pressed to actually reach the 1GB/moth allotment. The best part is, that if you do reach the 1GB marker, you end up paying €0.25 for every additional MB of data downloaded. In the interest of fairness, they do limit the cost to €19.99 per 300MB of data traffic. A real bargain.
There are more exclusive alternatives where you pay between €25-€50 a month, but the deal is still the same. Limited traffic to 5GB and around 300Kb/s. That I could work with, but I just on principle won’t get it because of the restrictions.
I am regretting my choice right now though… since I have absolutely nothing to do on the train, but then again; at least I still have my principles.

The train rant comes to an end.

The Train Rant Begins

I am actually sitting in a train in Germany writing this. Why you might ask? Well, simply put, because I’m a bit of an idiot. I transferred a bunch of movies from my desktop to my laptop so that I could have something to do on the train. Being the idiot that I am though, I managed to forget to push over videoLAN or VLC Media Player. Since I’m running a Netbook with XP I don’t have all those fancy codec packs I have at home. Not so ninja.
So here I am with exactly nothing to do, and no one but myself to blame. Awesome.
Actually, that is not entirely accurate. I do have someone to blame. Microsoft.
Seriously. Why is it that VLC Media Player is completely free and can play anything, but doesn’t come pre-installed on all machines. At home I use codec packs together with Windows Media Player. I have no good reason to use it, except that “I always have.” I’m used to the interface in WMP so I guess that might be a reason…
Back to bashing Microsoft though. I do not understand how codecs work. I have enough working knowledge to know to download, install update and basically what files to associate to which programs with what codecs. Kind of. That said I do not understand why Microsoft can’t deliver codecs so that their Media Player can play everything or just bundle VLC with Windows.
Okay, so that was a stupid statement. Why make Windows a good alternative to use? MS has like no incentive to make their products better, and I don’t think they care.
What about computer companies like Samsung or Dell. They stuff all kinds of crap into new PCs when you buy them. Seriously, any new computer I’m asked to help set up and configure, I spend a third of the time just uninstalling that out-of-the-box crap some idiot decided “might come in handy.” Here is a thought: a working media player would have come in awesome handy right now. If a computer company asked me right now, what I would change about their product, the only thing I would say would be, “Put a decent Media Player on it.” Take an open source, make your own, buy someone else’s – I couldn’t care less how it gets done, as long as it gets done. Anything short of a malware infected and badly compiled crash-generator would have been the best Media Player in the world, if it could just play the stuff that I want to watch right now.

The train rant continues.

New cookie laws to be passed – might as well be chocolate-chip

Would someone who has even a basic understanding of how the Internet works, for god’s sake please go knock some sense into the idiots over at the European Union.

A new law prohibiting the use of cookies unless expressly desired by the user will be put into effect within the next 18 months. As thenextweb.com reports, this is breathtakingly stupid.

You have the option to delete cookies, or you can set your browser to not allow cookies – but the European Union decided that we need regulation on cookies. What kind of idiots do the have running that place!

Cookies are required for websites to function, at least most of the websites I use. Am I going to receive a pop-up every time my browser downloads a new set of cookies. What about multiple machines, or god for bid public machines, where cookies are deleted on log out by default.

I mean, holy crap. We were worried about the Internet breaking? Well this is it.

Dear Google: If it isn’t broken. Don’t fix it!

Endgadget has uncovered the new super secret Gmail interface.

The validity of this new interface has been questioned, if somewhat vaguely, but nonetheless. Personally I think that these screenshots are legitimate. I would not at all be surprised if Google were pushing out a new email interface. Google gave us a new AdWords interface earlier this year and said, “Get used to it, because we’re killing off the old interface.”

Which Google later did. A few weeks ago, it became apparent that we will be dealing with a new Google AdSense interface as reported by numerous online sources. So why not mess up our Gmail also?

I don’t mind personally. I get used to a new UI within minutes if it’s intuitive and a week at most if it isn’t. My mother on the other hand takes about 15 million years to get used to a new icon. For example I switched her off IE7 and onto Firefox. I had to switch the display icon for Firefox to IE for her to get it… and then she couldn’t use it.

I finally have her using Gmail, and it’s worked wonders. It took endless hours of training, but she got there. I am afraid however, that if Google is pushing out a new interface the whole damn thing will start all over again.

Google will probably tell you, that the new interface is opt-in. The new Gmail interface will be a choice you can make.

Probably.

For like 6 months and then, poof. It disappears.

Do you honestly think that most people who use Gmail (the parents we forced to switch) will understand?

I don’t. So here’s my message:

Dear Google,

The Gmail interface is not broken. We like it just the way it is. If you insist on tweaking it, pretty, pretty, pretty please let it be an opt-in upgrade (for current users) and not an opt-out. My mother would never find the opt-out switch. She couldn’t send emails for three days because you changed the lables and displayed a layover she couldn’t get rid of.

Just because I’m smart enough to use Gmail, does not mean I’m geeky enough to understand it.

Google v Gazopa

Google pushed their similar image search out of of Google Labs. This just shortly after GazoPa entered open beta and TechCrunch gave the similar image search service a thumbs up. Similar image search is something that has been on the move over the past year. It hasn’t gotten the attention I feel it rightly deserves. Why do I feel that similar image search deserves said attention? Well, if you work in a publishing house, or for a newspaper you have millions of images at your disposal and you pay to use them.

However, if you are like 99% of the online populaiton are one of the “little guys” your image options are often limited to the poublic domain. This is where GazoPa is really cool, and beats Google hands down.

Let’s look at a case. Say I write this blog post, and I want an imgae to go with it… but I have no idea 1) how to find what I am looking for 2) when I find an image, if I can use it. All I need to do is go to GazoPa and upload a sample file of an image that looks like the one I want. I then set it to filter for images licensed under CC and labled for reuse. Viola! I have a image which I am free to use, and it took me less than two minutes!

Google Ranks on Traffic??

For those of you who don’t know; how Google ranks websites is a big, big secret.

In a post that popped into my twitter feed this morning a blogger claims to have heard a Google employee say that they rank websites based on that websites traffic.

This is… to say the least a “uh-oh” moment for very many people. I am now waiting to hear Google either confirm or deny the issue. Depending on if Google ranks your authority (forgot to mention, that’s what we are talking about), so depending on if Google ranks your authority based on your traffic or not, well then we are either in big trouble or in barney (cockney for trouble).

If it is the case, that Google grants authority based on volume of traffic, then it changes the online playing field significantly.

If it isn’t the case, then we can all breathe a little easier. Not that knowing some of the secrets behind the curtain would be great… but if everyone found out at the same time the Google SERPs would show an upheaval of biblical proportions. The problem is, when Google has said something in the past, they have always been truthful. Granted they change things all the time, but they don’t lie. At least not in my experience.

So either we are all screwed, or Google’s trust just went out the window.

Touchcontrol from 10/GUI

TechCrunch recently posted on the 10/GUI touch-interface concept.

I like the concept of it. Since TechCrunch posted on it, I’m not going to go into detail. Read the post and watch the video.

Here are my two cents on the topic:

If I were behind the design, and I most definitively am not (for obvious reasons), I would have combined the touch-area with the keyboard. ie. switching the interface area to a keyboard. I am sure that the hardware complexity and cost would skyrocket, but how cool would it be!?

All you need to do is hit an area, and you can type on the pad… but using a [insert cool name of feature yet to be invented] you can feel the keys as you type on the touchpad interface.

Other than that, I want one. Like, yesterday!

On a side note, I would have loved to link to their page, but couldn’t find it within my 10 second online attention span. This search was all I could come up with.

TechPorn

I know this isn’t news to most, but it may be to some. Or you may just not have noticed it, but there is a reason why TechCrunch write the way they do. Let’s take this title:

Bing! So That’s What A Swizzle Stick Is.

and the snippet that goes with it:

Microsoft’s new Bing search engine just can’t seem to stay out of the red light district, no matter how hard they try. There’s no denying it is hands down the best porn search engine on the planet…

Let’s just look at the keywords here “Swizzle Stick”, “Red light district”, “porn search”. The rest of the post (which is a pretty ok read) is littered with much of the same.

So back to the point of why TechCrunch does this. It’s easy. They rank well for searches of porn related or erotic keywords. The images included in the posts are also often of a lightly clothed attractive female.

Even when there isn’t excuse to put porn into a post there is always the “and even though it isn’t [blablabla] porn”.

Now, you might think that this seems stupid. Why rank well for something that you actually don’t have anything to do with, because contrary to the search results TechCrunch is not a porn site.
Well, a stereotypical argument would be “related search”. ie. geeks search for porn.

However it’s easier than that. Looking at some of the data, TechCrunch may actually be getting as much as, or more than 10,000,000 visits a year from x-rated searches.