YiBi's Life|Live Log

I woke up this morning to discover that TweetDeck has changed. Slightly different interface, and now we need a TweetDeck account. Not something that I like very much. Why not allow us to sign in with our Twitter account. It’s one less account littered on the Internet. But nonetheless, I created an account. TweetDeck has integration Facebook and Twitter on one screen and it’s very convenient. I *HOPE* they will consider Google+ integration as well. Then they will be the ultimate killer, in my humble opinion.

Fired up TweetDeck in my Chrome, and saw a Tweet from @davegirouard talking about new features in Gmail. There’s now better integration with Google+ which allows filtering based on Circles.

We can now add people to our circles from Gmail. I think this will tremendously help to boost the sign up for Google+ now with everything on one screen.

On a side note. The Google+ interface is still a bit unnatural somehow. It’s not as fluid as Facebook as I feel personally. Hopefully Google+ can take off in a much bigger scale. I like the circle concept much more than the Facebook lists.

Oh, 1 more upcoming. Facebook Timeline. Watch out for this. Very interesting.

I was reading an article in the papers today about Google saying Siri is competition to their search business. This is something that many people have been talking about, i.e. Siri changing the paradigm for internet search etc.

In my opinion however, what Siri really threatens is Google’s advertising business.

For those unfamiliar with Google’s advertising business, Google basically has 2 products, namely Adsense and Adwords. In Adwords, advertisers bid for keywords and air their advertisement on websites that displays Google Adsense. Google decides what advertisement to display based on user’s history, keywords on that user search etc. One problem with this model is that users are searching for contents and information, not the advertisements.

In Siri however, the search is very specific. If I tell Siri I want to get a pair of shoes, Apple can throw very specific advertisements to me. The conversion rate and effectiveness of the advertisement is significantly higher because Google Adsense is very passive compared to Siri. The advertising experience become personal rather than guesswork in Google’s case.

Apple has not done targeted advertisements yet in Siri’s search results, but I think they would do so soon as Siri matures more over the next few months. When this comes, Google’s going to be in an awkward position since their main revenue source is from advertisement. Bear in mind that Facebook has already splitted a portion of the pie, so Google is going to lose more should Apple grow the advertising business.

Android Orphans

A friend posted this article on my Facebook wall.

http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphans-visualizing-a-sad-history-of-support

This article talks about how the various generations of Android phones are left behind while newer phones get the latest Android.

I don’t to leave this open-ended and have people think that I’m an Apple fanboy. I’m a Linux admin and I have been using Linux on my office laptop for a very long time. So why iPhone and not Android phones?

Upgrade Woes

I have never owned an Android phone. The number 1 reason is that I dislike the customizations that the individual phone makers do to the OS. The implication is that certain models will be left behind in the upgrade process. We have been this in the Windows PDA phones in the past. Because of the difference in hardware, there’s tremendous effort for the phone makers to ensure that every single model runs the most current OS. So the easy way out is to leave them behind. I forecasted this since the very first version of Android and I have been proven right all these while.

Android vs iOS

So came the Nexus One. Google supported, plain vanilla Android. I was actually contemplating getting that but I chose the iPhone 3GS. Why? My choice was very much affected by my experience on the Mac.

While I still use Linux on my office laptop, I find myself doing most of my work on my Mac. I bought my first Macbook in 2007 and after using OS X, the impression was: It just works! No tinkering. No fiddling. I don’t getting into the situation where I need to solve the machine problem even before I get down to doing work. It’s a lot of time wasted.

Similarly on the iOS, a lot of things just work out of the box. One example was configuring of L2TP over IPSEC VPN on the iPhone. It takes less than 2 mins to get the iPhone setup and connected. 3 steps to get to the configuration screen, enter configuration details and we are done. My colleague tried it on their Android phone. The first phone took us close to 10 mins to figure out how to configure the connection. He later gave up his Samsung Galaxy for a new iPhone  4.

Now Google has announced that the Nexus One is not getting the latest OS. To fair, I haven’t read the details and I’m not sure what’s the rationale. But if you look at the chart, even the iPhone 3GS gets iOS 5. While some features are not available, the major key enhancement are made available to the 3GS user. They are not left behind.

I was thinking of getting the Nexus Galaxy actually after looking at the features of Android 4, but it looks like my next phone will still be a Apple phone after all.

Finally, Google+ is here for Google Apps users. I caught a tweet by Dave Girouard just mins ago announcing that it’s ready.

This is the official announcement on Google App blog.

http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/10/google-is-now-available-with-google.html

Gotta try it immediately although it’s already past 1am local time. Headed over to http://plus.google.com. It’s not enabled yet in my domain settings.

Popped over to Google Apps and flicked the switch.

Next, to http://google.com/profiles to get my profile created.

And then to http://plus.google.com and that’s it!

Enjoy!

Great news I saw this morning. I hope Dave Girourard means 2 or 3 days not 10 – 20 days. I have just uploaded over 10GB of pictures into my Picasa account. Seriously looking forward to see all those stuff popping up when Google+ is there.

And next thing Google need to fix: YouTube.

I’m down with a terrible flu this week, so the blogging slowed down as well.

Saw this tweet yesterday, didn’t think it was anytime soon anyway. But Google announced something else: Google+ is now available for public. Really? No. Google Apps users like me are left out because Google can’t get us the Profiles portion on Google Apps. I have read their rationale from forums etc, but the main gripe is that there’s no timeline. In March, they said coming soon, Juiy they said the same thing. It’s September now.

So when are we getting it?

I decided to check out the domain administration page of my Google Apps Account today in the hope of finding the option to turn on Google Profiles. I thought, Google might want to surprise me. Profiles is not there, but I found something yet. Finally, I get my Blogger access back!

I almost stopped blogging these 2 months because I had to use another Gmail account for logging in and this is screwing up my blog pictures that I saved on Picasa with my Google Apps Account. I was really so pissed, I wanted to move the blog back to my webhosting account. All the new updates ended up in another Picasa account.

I’m glad they got the Blogger issue fixed. Now the next thing that I hope to get, is my Google Profiles, so that I can get on Google+. To the Google Engineers working on the post-transition issues: Thanks a bunch!

After my last episode with transition to the new Google infrastructure, I have been considering whether I should stay on Google Apps. Another one of my blog is on Google, my mails with my own domain is also with Google and I’m paying for extra storage on my mail and Picassa. Tons of my photos are with Google. Google created the stickiness which I’m ready to accept, given the brillant track record they have for their services.

Now, Google+ is launched. My friends told me that their Picassa photos appear automatically on G+, they are porting their profiles over from Facebook, and they are asking me for my G+ account. And all of them are surprise that I don’t have it, given that I have been preaching to everyone the amazing benefits of using Google Apps.

I have been reading forums and it’s not surprising to find that there are tons of people like me, stuck! The common sentiment is, ‘it’s ok, we trust Google will do something about this, but WHEN?!’. Google has been silent about this. There’s no indication at all on the prospect of Google Apps users getting Google+ (and getting my Blogger account back).

The only sure way I can get it now, is to actually to move my domain out of Google, cancel my Apps account and register a personal account with my yibi.org email address. The next best and natural choice is Apple’s iCloud, but maybe just hosting my mails back at my own server.

Well, let’s see if Google can fix this fast. Otherwise, I’m going to get started on moving.

One of the first painful things when switching to a new mobile phone is migrating the contact list, especially when you are switch to a totally different brand or platform. Last week I got the iPhone 4 for my wife as Christmas present to replace her Nokia E71.

Prior to the switch, I have already configured the E71 to sync her whole phone book to Google. We are using Google Apps Domain, which is Gmail and all the whole suite of Google Apps, but using my own domain name.

The telco was pretty efficient in activating the micro sim for iPhone 4, which is not expected. We were at the mall and her old SIM card got deactivated and the new card activated, barely one hour after signing up the mobile package. The staff told us it’s going to take 6 hours or more to have the new sim card activated. I’m not complaining though.

Under normal circumstances, having the old sim deactivated means she had to lookup her old phone for contacts and key in into the iPhone if she’s trying to  make a call or send a message. What I did was I configured the iPhone to sync with Google on the spot. Within mins, her whole phonebook was downloaded into the iPhone from Google and the phone is fully functional. No PCs and sync software involved. Cool?

This means I can switch phones anytime, as long as the phone supports ActiveSync. Google has implemented ActiveSync for syncing Email, Phone Book and Calendar. Both Nokia and iPhone supports ActiveSync.

Here’s more information on how I did it.

http://www.google.com/mobile/

Google Sync For Nokia

Google Sync For iPhone

Popular game app Angry Birds, for example, sends a user’s username, contacts, location and phone ID along to Google/Chillingo (a unit at Electronic Arts, which markets the game) and to Flurry, an application analytics company. Do Angry Birds actually seem more menacing to you now?

It’s not only smartphone apps. Facebook apps leak alot of information too. That’s why I’m very particular when adding apps.

Read the whole article from the link below.

http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2010/12/20/how-smartphone-applications-spy-on-their-users/

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone