Coherent Blahs

So, officially, the iPhone 4G is released, and according to Jobs, “it’s the biggest leap since the original iPhone”. But, where’s the beef?

Let’s see what iphone 4G brings us EXTRA:

1. Front facing Camera and videoconferencing: Well, it’s a neat feature, but not new. Android based Evo 4G already has a front facing camera, and Android has been supporting video chat for quite some time anyway.

2. External buttons, volume up and down, mute, front facing camera: Finally, FINALLY Apple realizes that that ALL soft buttons is not the best idea after all.

3.  Two mics for active noise cancellation: Heck, HTC had it for a long time. Even almost-obsolete Nexus 1 has this.

4. Gyroscope: Yes, this is definitely a new addition, and will be welcome by the gaming world. However, given it’s based on third party hardware, it’ll probably be on other phones within weeks. This is also an incremental addition, not really a “leap” I’d say.

5:  Retina Display: This, I think, is iPhone 4G’s biggest addition. But again, being third party, and hardware based, it’ll probably show up on other phones within weeks. This is also just an incremental addition.

On the software front, most of the stuff was declared with the iOS release, and Google had already upped the ante. Multitasking, Wallpapers were already there in Android.

So, let me ask again, where’s the beef… ahem… the leap?

Personally, I had expected WWDC to give us something better. Seems like Apple is now playing the catchup game, trying to sell front facing camera, multitasking etc. which have been on Android phones for some time now.

There are no MiFi mobile hotspots or free GPS navigation,  features already present in Android. Heck, with Froyo being deployed, Android users can now play all the games at Kongregate, watch all the videos (and not just the 75% of videos that Jobs wants iPhone users to watch), and do what THEY want, not what Jobs wants for them.

Related articles:

Showdown: iPhone 4 vs. HTC Evo 4G (wired.com)

After my last Canon i960 broke down, got a Canon MX860 all-in-one. The first hiccup was finding the drivers.  There was no supported driver available for this at Canon USA support site. Strangely, there was a supported driver for Linux available at Canon Australia site.

Although the driver allowed me, with a bit of tweaking, both printing and scanning over wired and wireless connections, the print dialogs didn’t have all the necessary config knobs. This is due to missing functionality in the PPD file for the printer that has been distributed with the driver.

Google to the rescue. I found this discussion with the solution:

FYI, add this to /etc/cups/ppd/Canon-MX860.ppd 

and You can set resolution, quality and greyscale 

snip ------- 




*OpenUI *Resolution/Output Resolution: PickOne 

*DefaultResolution: 600dpi 

*Resolution 600dpi/600 dpi: "<</HWResolution[600 600]>>setpagedevice" 

*Resolution 1200dpi/1200 dpi: "<</HWResolution[1200 1200]>>setpagedevice" 

*Resolution 2400dpi/2400 dpi: "<</HWResolution[2400 2400]>>setpagedevice" 

*CloseUI: *Resolution 




*OpenUI *CNQuality/Quality: PickOne 

*DefaultCNQuality: 3 

*CNQuality 2/High: "2" 

*CNQuality 3/Normal: "3" 

*CNQuality 4/Standard: "4" 

*CNQuality 5/Economy: "5" 

*CloseUI: *CNQuality 




*OpenUI *CNGrayscale/Grayscale: PickOne 

*DefaultCNGrayscale: false 

*CNGrayscale false/Off: "false" 

*CNGrayscale true/On: "true" 

*CloseUI: *CNGrayscale 




snip ----- 

Not all Emails are made equal. And some have the priority that they cannot wait.  Given that, I was looking for a way to filter out mails, and get a quick notification on some high priority Emails.
Since I have an Android phone, the best way for me to get notified is either through SMS, or through Google Talk. SMS costs money. So, I wanted the notification to come over GTalk.
My work Email resides on an Exchange server, and it has no way to filter an Email and generate a GTalk notification from it. So, I had to look for some client side solution.
Looking around the web, I found GTalk uses jabber as the underlying protocol, and I can use xmpp libraries to communicate with it.
(continue reading…)

I installed the wpTogo app on my phone, and now mobile blogging is a reality. This is my first post from Android!!!
So far, I’m loving the phone. It’s really really convenient to be connected all the time. Exchange sync with pushmail worked flawlessly. I’m getting the hang of the onscreen keyboard too.
T-Mobile dropped the donut update, and the performance is even better now.

YES!! I finally took the plunge and got the TMobile Mytouch (HTC Magic) handset running Android. So far am quite impressed by the handset, not so much with the T-Mobile service.

I still have my AT&T set, and at home, T-Mobile call quality is much better than AT&T. However, at my work at Juniper Networks, T-Mobile coverage is pretty bad. Inside the building, the data coverage always falls back to EDGE instead of 3G.

The silver lining is… TMo is setting up a tower very near the work building. So, hopefully this problem will go away.

Coming back to the handset, I like the feel of it in hand over Iphone (which feels much larger and difficult to operate using one hand).  The keyboard is a little sluggish, but hopefully that will be fixed with the Donut release come tomorrow. The phone looks super cool. I’m still getting used to all the features.

Apps that I added so far are:

Will cover some of them in later posts.

Now, this is really weird. I was searching for one place to get the list of all the states so that I don’t have to type it up for something I’m writing, and look what I found.

Look at the Sponsored Link section. Bing is putting Ads on Google!!! Huh!!!

I just got the Costco Magazine, and it clearly mentions that Mytouch 3G will be available in-store from August 5th. Even better, they will give you 35$ service credit.

Here is the ad from Costco Magazine:

Mytouch at costco

This was too good to pass:

I have uploaded the Yellowstone trip GPX and GPI files at the Yellowstone travel page.

Apparently, T-Mobile is going to announce their next Android based Google phone early next week. I was at my local Costco today, and asked the cell-phone kiosk guy off-hand about the availability of the phone at Costco warehouse. He said it will be available for purchase in August, and went ahead to mention that the whole lineup of handsets at Costco will be refreshed around the same time.