Improving app discovery the social way

I love to discover apps for my mobile, tablet, ipod touch, etc and I'm sure most of the others who have such handheld devices feel the same way. While the current app engines like "Google Play", "ITunes Store", "Amazon Apps", "Samsung Apps" etc try to fulfill this in some way or another, it still doesn't fully meet my/everyone's requirements.

For long, I've wanted the ability to know what apps are popular with my friends, and for me to publish what I use in an easy way so that others can see what I've discovered (other than me having to write about it).

Would it be possible for Google/Apple to aid app discovery by allowing my phone/tablet/... to publish the list of (my selected) apps that I have installed on my phone/tablet/... to Google+, Facebook, Twitter (via some URL), etc?

Google+/FB/ (or Google/Apple) then in turn needs to have a way for users to discover the popular apps, categories (and such) in their circles at the aggregate level and even deep dive to individual users.

I terribly miss the capability to share my list of apps in an easy way and/or discover what others are using.

Is this already available and I'm somehow missing it? Or do you know if there are such plans on the cards and it's on its way? If so, when? If not, do you know how it can be brought to the attention of the powers that be?

I feel that it may also be worthwhile to provide a mechanism to indicate the phone manufacturer, model, OS, etc in FB, G+ posts - if users wish to include it - and provide a similar mechanism for discover.

Upgrade after almost 6 years

Back in 2006, I talked about my second phone, the nokia 6233.

After spending about Rs.2000 recently in making it looking brand new, I decided to take the dive.

And got myself a Samsung Galaxy S3, 32GB!

That's the reason for excitement and cryptic posts :)

More another day, another time.

Youtube Movies

Watch free movies as well as rent some @

YouTube Movies

Came in via the Google Friends Newsletter.

My adsense account disabled! Google Vs Facebook. Social Networking ...

Given the long hiatus from my blog and the apparent lack of a huge readership group, here's what I got!

One thing that bothers me when I have to blog stuff is that I've to think about a title. Seriously! Facebook is much easier with the simple "what's your status?" update. Of course, it's a "closed" group, so I'd end up posting a bit more on it than on a public blog and most of my personal, day-to-day contacts are connected via it - so hopefully, they are a bit more "informed" that what comes via this medium (blog). Does make me wonder that Google is so close to losing it on the social networking front!

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Hello,

After reviewing our records, we've determined that your AdSense account
poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a
responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due
to invalid activity, we've found it necessary to disable your AdSense
account. Your outstanding balance and Google's share of the revenue will
both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers.

Please understand that we need to take such steps to maintain the
effectiveness of Google's advertising system, particularly the
advertiser-publisher relationship. We understand the inconvenience that
this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and
cooperation.

If you have any questions or concerns about the actions we've taken, how
you can appeal this decision, or invalid activity in general, you can find
more information by visiting
http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

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So, what do I "hate" about Google Chrome?

Well, as I have mentioned earlier, "hate" is a strong word. But then that's probably a good/captivating headline :)

I love Google Chrome for a lot of reasons, including its speed, clean tabbed interface, the process sandboxing of each tab, ...

The one thing that makes me irk and my blood boil at times is the fact that it makes me think someone in their design team probably wanted to do something different and ended up changing the sizes of the minimize, restore and (especially) close buttons at the top right corner. Quite often I almost end up clicking the close button instead of the restore or minimize, thanks to the size differences between this and other applications - on Windows XP.

Do you use Chrome? Do you find this irritating? Is there a reason this is designed this way?!! This probably is one reason, but I definitely find this appearance/behavior troublesome - maybe no fault of Google, but wish there was an easy way to resolve this.

Suggestions? Apart from upgrading Vista / to Windows 7 / Linux?

Google introducing Two Factor Authentication (via mobile phone)

Google is introducing 2FA. You can sign in with your password and an additional code sent to your mobile phone. More details on the google blog entry.

Will you use this?

What are Indians searching for?

To see what has been capturing Indian's mind on the web, look no further than the ultimate oracle of search - Google.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2010/regions/in.html

The lists - Fastest rising, Most popular, Faster rising people, Most popular movies, Most popular brands, Most popular how to - are interesting and so are the grpahs/charts.

A brief from their summary.

While the IRCTC (railway ticket booking) continues to top the charts of the year-on-year fastest rising bracket, some of the newer interesting entries this year are the low cost smart phone maker Micromax Mobiles and YouTube Videos. As the FIFA World Cup grabbed the real world attention, netizens too showed the excitement catching them online. Amongst the most popular on the web – Songs, Facebook and Google remain the top three. Amongst the fastest rising people, Indians searched for British actress Aruna Shields and this year’s new Bollywood sensation, Sonakshi Sinha. Other favorites from Bollywood were Zarine Khan, Katrina Kaif; and amongst the men, Salman Khan ruled the web.

My next phone - looking always to the future :)

I've been tempted long enough. The first two are what are available in the Indian market now. While the others are those on the global list.
Samsung Galaxy S
HTC Desire
HTC Desire HD
IPhone 4
Nexus S

Thanks to the IPod Touch 4 that I got about a month ago, I'm quite impressed with the IPhone apps platform and the number of "useful" apps on it. Not sure how the android market stacks up to that for those apps that I seek now and possibly want in the future.

The Indian market unfortunately has no "real sale" even during peak holiday seasons for things such as these. Given that this is already year end and there are rumors about dual core mobile processors (from Samsung, Qualcomm, ARM, Intel) hitting the market in Q1 of 2011, I'm tempted to postpone the "always in the future" purchase decision. But then, there's also the thought that with more powerful processors, battery may be a bigger problem and hence possibly not worth it.

Let's see how this goes.

Why do Google Chrome 8 & 7 co-exist?

So, why do Google Chrome 8 & 7 seem to co-exist, each of them taking about 150MB space?

Adsense - initial blues

Between my regular and humor blog, there's a difference in the way adsense works.

It works fine in my humor blog whereas on my regular blog, just the sidebar container works. The ad below the first post in main page doesn't come up, nor do individual posts show the ad beneath them. Not sure how feedburner is rendering those.

Could certainly use some help in figuring this one out.

Google AdSense - 6 years later

For those who have followed this blog for long, I shied away from Google AdSense way back in Jan 2005 for those documented reasons.

I'm now reviving it, albeit I've not decided how I'll put the monetary part into use, if at all I do make anything :)

Obviously the technology would have come a long way from then on and it's interesting to note that further to their acquisition of Feedburner, they have made that integration quite easy as well.

Right now, one of the best URL's that I've ever had is for my humor blog via http://feeds.feedburner.com/humor and I believe I should do more justice to that blog as well!

And, did I say that my "inspiration" to turn on AdSense was my friend Krishnamoorthy - for reasons he best can guess :)

Kindle 3 WiFi, e-readers, touchscreen tablets

So, I got Kindle 3 WiFi for Krish, still to get to Chennai with it. I like the concept of e-readers, but I'm aghast at the prices at which books sell legally :) IMHO, many product prices do not take PPP into consideration and there are possibly some valid reasons for it as well in the context of "e-goods". However, they do lose out on a large market for this very reason as well.

Well, FWIW, I'm quite tempted with the concept of touchscreen tablet when compared to a plain e-reader. I'd like to gift one to my parents who'll appreciate the ease of using a touchscreen device when compared to a regular desktop/laptop. However, I'm also sure that I'd be hogging the device if that was the only touchscreen tablet device at home :)

Samsung Galaxy Tab with 7" touchscreen, camera, wifi and android is a step in right direction - however I'm not fully convinced about screen size. I'd rather take the ~10" Apple iPad - however that's still missing camera (front & back) and is also exorbitantly priced without an external/SD card storage mechanism. I'll probably wait for the next gen tablets to make entry into the market. Apple can be quite greedy at times - afterall the 16GB iPad sells at $500 while 64GB sells at $700. $200 difference for 48GB! But then, the Samsung Galaxy Tab at $600 isn't a very inspiring price either for a 7" device. There was mention of a $500 variant with just Wi-Fi, but I can't seem to find enough information on it on the net - they mostly talk about the 3G+WiFi variant.

I do like Krish's take that a reader like kindle without extra-ordinary capabilities will keep him less distracted and dedicated to the task of reading! I couldn't agree more :) Will be interesting to see how HTC Nook Color (Barnes & Noble) stands up against Kindle.

In the meanwhile, if any of the readers are interested in gifting me one (either the tablet or e-reader), thanks in advance :)

Discovered TweetDeck recently

Discovered TweetDeck (for desktop) recently - kind of an answer to my earlier post asking for a social networking amalgamation.

The thing with all these "wonderful" tools (including Twitter, FB) is that their business model is unknown (not fully mature) at the moment.

And, while I've handed over to TweetDeck the keys to my LinkedIn, Facebook accounts, I'm still not ready/comfortable to hand them the Google keys.

Anyone have any feedback?

Find the most happening phone in your part of the world

Crisp version for those in the US: iPhone More Global Than Android — for Now

Or better still, look at the data yourself in the report (recommended) after a read of the blog from AdMob!

Google Buzz Black Magic?

Something strange is going on with Google Buzz. Everytime I login, I find that it lists 4 sites as "connected" for me.






When I try editing, I can find only 3, and when I save and exit, it becomes 3 for the time being, only to become 4 later.





Something certainly fishy or buggy!!

Google Storage, Picasa & Photos

Google provides additional storage of 20GB at a nominal $5/year (Rs.250) that is shared between Gmail, Picasa Web Albums and Google Docs. Sounds very tempting, especially given the amount of photos that I can have and can store, share. Considering lapping it up.

Do you have it? What do you think?

Currently I use Snapfish India for storing, sharing & printing my photos. At about Rs.3/photo, they are the probably the cheapest & best in India. They provide unlimited storage provided you print with them once in a year, which is something I do anyway.

However, my photo album application on the computer is undoubtedly Picasa. Just love the app. It has a "sync" feature between the app on desktop and PicasaWebAlbums, which can make life very easy. And, sharing photos via Picasa also provides options for recipients to download albums, etc.

FWIW, I may still continue to use Snapfish for printing photos once in a while.

Google Wave

Finally got an invite from Google for Google Wave. Interesting, but there definitely is a need for tons of 3rd party apps on top for it to realize the potential.

While there is an option to invite friends, the system doesn't ensure that the invite goes out immediately - kinda lame at the moment, but maybe they have their own issues at the backend in fulfillment.

My friend Krish has a similar opinion as well.

Yahoo Email Import

A few years ago (2005 time frame), I wrote to the Gmail team asking for the ability to import email from other accounts via POP. That wish is finally coming true now.

I've been able to successfully import from Yahoo, without even enabling POP on Yahoo !! Yay !! Go Google, Go Gmail !

Adsense Confusion

My friend at work brought up the topic that his adsense application was repeatedly rejected with very generic reasons for about 3 times till it was finally approved.

This conversation reminded me of my way-back (2004/05) adsense "adventure" earlier (Google Ad Sense, Google Adsense and me) , and I decided to enabled adsense for my blog on trial basis.

Although I have enabled Adsense for my blog, I don't know which account is being used, whether my "way-back" account (not with google) is still active, etc. Will get to know in a couple of days.

< Promotion Plug >
So, coming to the topic of will I take it out once I find out whether/how it works, I think I know now what I will do with my earlier confusion. I will donate the amount (if any) to an NGO that my cousin runs - Surabi.
</ Promotion Plug >

Youtube on my mobile (nokia 6233)

Thanks to Opera Mini, I learnt that I could see YouTube videos on my mobile (Nokia 6233), via m.youtube.com.

P.S: Not that I'm a big fan of youtube videos, it's just that it's possible and convenient now.