While both Android and iOS ship with Calculator apps by default, there are no stock Converter apps. So, you’ve to rely on third party apps. Flib is one such unit converter app, releasing for both iOS and Android.
Flib really stands from the competition with its user interface. The icons look flat and neat and there are neat flipping (that’s why the name ‘Flib’) transitions here and there. Of course, the main focus is still on converting units.
There are a lot units available – starting from area, length, volume to energy, speed, temperature and to even time. If the list is missing the unit you want, you can always mail the app developers for a feature request. It doesn’t convert currency, for example.
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Flib is pretty smart too, it shows the most used conversions on the first screen, for easy access. Finally, you can customise the interface too! Basically, you can set your desired colour for the interface.
The app is available for free and can be tried on Android right now. It is also tablet ready.
For iPhones, the app will be releasing pretty soon. You can sign up for the mailing list to get notified as it releases.
Yahoo has just capped off a very significant day for themselves. Firstly they have announced the acquisition of the blogging platform Tumblr. In the second announcement, Flickr has now rolled out 1 Terabyte free storage for all users. This is a big deal for Yahoo which has recently struggled to keep its users and more importantly find new users.
The Tumblr Acquisition
Yahoo has bought Tumblr for a estimated $1.1 Billion. That is a lot more money than say Facebook shelled out for Instagram. So what does Yahoo gain from Tumblr?
Tumblr has 300 million unique visitors on it and has over 900 posts published every second.
The Yahoo+ Tumblr deal will grow traffic by 20% and its audience will go up by 50%. This increases the advertising opportunities.
Mobile seems to be a focus for Yahoo with Tumblr’s acquisition.
Yahoo’s CEO in her own Tumblr blog announced that Tumblr will be treated as an independent entity and their CEO David Karp will remain. More importantly in her own words she assuaged the feelings of Tumblr’s community with the quote “We promise not to screw it up”.
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Flickr gets 1 TB free space
Flickr is still very popular and its not surprising Yahoo chose to make big announcements with it.
Flickr users get 1 TB storage space free. That means if you upload 6.5 Megapixel photo on Flickr, you can upload half a million of them and for free.
The big storage size means Flickr now remain relevant as a storage option especially with the rise of backup options from Google and Apple.
Pro Flickr account users will continue to get unlimited storage space and have stats show up for visits on their photos. But new users cannot signup for Pro accounts. That basically means Flickr Pro is more or less going away in time.
Flickr might have rebooted with huge storage space but it will be interesting to see how it manages to complete with the likes of say Google+ which offers to store photos from a phone directly to the cloud. This helps freeing up space on the phone without worrying about losing any photos.
What are your views on Yahoo’s big announcements today? Do drop in your comments.
WordPress users around the world will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the first WordPress edition by organizing several meet-ups across the world. The anniversary falls on May 27, 2013.
The meetups will take place on 27th May in many cities. If you are interested in meeting up with local WordPress enthusiasts then look up this list of meetups being planned.
If you find none in your city, you can even plan create your own meetup for your city or town.
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Why are meetups important?
Meetups are very important for WordPress communities. Especially in India, where a lot of WordCamps have started to take place but very few small WordPress meetups are happenings. Being an open-source project no company is going to put a lot of resources in marketing events to get local developers and bloggers together Hence such meetups organized from ground up are very important.
I will be attending the meetup in Mumbai and hopefully will meet some fascinating people from the WordPress community in the city.
LG’s Nexus 4 has been awaited for a long time to come. It finally showed up a couple of days ago on Flipkart for pre-order but the launch was not officially confirmed. LG has confirmed declaring the phone is being launched in India at the price tag of Rs. 25,999. The phone will be available at select retail stores of LG and multi-brand retailers. It is already available for pre-order with online vendors.
The phone will ship with 4.7 inch screen, 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 Processor, the resolution supported is 1280 X 786 pixel. The runs on stock Android 4.2.2. The phone will ship with a 8MP camera with the front-facing camera being 1.3MP HD.
So should you buy a Nexus 4 phone?
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Firstly, the phone gives its users the pure Android experience. This means the manufacturer does not put their own software on it. That is one of the biggest selling points of a Nexus phone.
Secondly, the phone is priced very reasonably. Most high-end smartphones are priced over Rs. 30,000. The Samsung Galaxys S4 (though much more powerful than Nexus 4) is priced at Rs. 41,500. So the price tag of Rs. 25,999 seems attractive.
Finally, your phone will get the latest Android updates available straight away. You will not be dependent on the manufacturer getting the updates through to your phone. For instance if tomorrow Android 4.3 is released, it will be available for your phone immediately.
The one issue I find with Nexus 4 is its glass back cover protecting the battery. This tends to make it fragile. The best way to avoid it is to buy a cover for your phone.
Yesterday, during the I/O keynote, Google has released its heavily rumoured instant messaging client codenamed ‘Babel’ – called Hangouts.
Well, why would Google release yet-another-instant-messaging-client? This time, they have a unique approach to it. They want Hangouts to replace all the messaging apps they’ve made till now. It’s kind of surprising how it took Google this long to realize this.
Hangouts is released for Android, Chrome and iOS. On Chrome, it is available as an extension which sits in your system tray or menu bar, more like a native app. The mobile apps (Android and iOS) are very well designed and show a lot of detail in UI.
The Android app for example, lets you swipe to dismiss the conversations (like you do in Gmail). There are lot of small transitions and animations hidden here and there. When you send a new message, an ellipsis starts animating (or dancing, if you prefer that way) and shows that it’s delivered.
You can of course send images and there’s plenty of emoji. Group Video and Voice calling are probably the standing out features, as originally seen in Google+ Hangouts. You can also snooze notifications for a specified amount of time (there needs to be such a system wide toggle in Android).
But Good is not enough
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So Hangouts works well on Chrome, iOS and Android. But it completely misses the most important feature – unifying all Google messaging apps. Sure, Hangouts replaces Talk and Google+ Messenger. But what about Google Voice (US-only) and more importantly, the (SMS) Messaging app.
Hangouts is obviously not available for less popular platforms like Windows Phone, Symbian, so it perfectly makes sense to integrate SMS into the app itself. So that you can SMS your friends who’re on those platforms.
That’s not the only downside of Hangouts, though. Hangouts doesn’t use XMPP, which is the widely used open protocol for instant messaging. But why should you care? Well, the number of instant messaging apps dependent on XMPP is mind blowing. I use iMessage for Mac as my default IM client, and Google Talk and Facebook Chat work perfectly. Because, both of them rely on XMPP.
Though it looks like Google won’t be shutting down Talk, leaving it for people who really need XMPP. Still, Google not respecting open web standards? Never expected this.
The sad thing for Google, is that, its competitors are doing really well. Facebook’s new Messenger app can do SMS. Heck, it even does Chat Heads – a really cool way to chat on your Android or iPhone. WhatsApp looks much better now with the flat Holo UI on Android.
The tl;dr is that, though Google has put some real effort into Hangouts, it is indeed going to be just another messaging app.
UPDATE: Some of the Google Fellows have confirmed that Messaging and Voice integration is coming to Hangouts soon. But here’s the thing: The fact that Google can’t ship a Messaging app with all its promised features (SMS and Voice integration) is what disappoints me.
Also, Google+ app on Android has got updated today, and it still has traces of Google+ Messenger in it. That surely tells that there’s a lot of work left for Google.
Google I/O 2013 started with a 3-hour long keynote address. Though many had expected a new Android version, a new Nexus device, new Google X phone to be announced, Google did none of that. Instead they announced an upgrade to a host of their services and products.
Here is a quick round-up of all the updates announced based on different products.
Android
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The numbers for Android continue to be impressive. It has 900 million Android activations and over 48 Billion app installations. Though no new Android version was announced there were plenty of new updates for Android.
Along with Google Maps API v 2.0 for Android a new Location API was announced. The new Location API allowed features like Geofencing on maps.
Google Cloud Messaging allows developers to send messages to Android app users. New update includes upstream messaging which allows messaging from users right up to developer’s server.
Google Cloud Messaging will also enable synchronizing of notifications. This means if you remove a notification from one Android device, it will be removed your other Android device too.
A new range of APIs were announced under Google Play game services. These will allow users who play games to play a particular level on one device and then continue with the next level from another device.
It will support cross-platform gaming experience which includes the web.
Android Studio: Android Studio was a new IDE for developers. The IDE supports previews for various sized screens. This should encourage better designed tablet apps.
App Translation Service will allow developers to translate their apps into different languages. Google will send strings that need to be translated to approved vendor.
Google Play Music is a new service on Android devices that launched. The service streams music based on monthly subscription fee of $9.99 in the US.
Samsung Galaxy S4 (running Vanilla Android)
Google will be selling a Galaxy S4 on their Google Play store. The phone will ship with LTE support and 16GB memory. It will run the default Android version and latest Android updates will be made available with no delays. The phone will be bootloader unlocked.
The disappointing part was probably the high price tag of $649. The phone will be available on June 26.
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Google+
Google might be slow in pushing new features on Google+ over the past year but they more than made up for it during this Google IO. They announced 41 new features specifically for Google+.
Google+ News Stream gets a new design. The design is two or three columned and allows looking through the feeds more or less like how we see it on the Google+ mobile apps.
Google+ is pushing more interactivity by displaying related hashtags.
Google+ Photos will have features like Auto Awesome that combines photos automatically to create new ones.
Multiple images can be used to create animated GIFs automatically.
Google’s unified messaging service: Hangouts
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There was speculation that Google will be released a new unified messaging service. The name of the new service is Hangouts. This will replace Google Talk.
The service syncs your chats on text, voice and video across platforms. New Hangouts service is available as Chrome extension and as apps on Android and iOS.
Search app on Chrome will allow voice based searching which will be activated by voice. This means users will not even need to touch the microphone logo on the interface.
Google Now will support reminders being set by users.
Google Now will also supporting something called hot-word detection. It will allow voice based multiple search queries to be be answered with results but remaining in context.
Google Maps
Google Maps will get updated over the next month or so. The new updates will be on Android and iPhone apps.
A new app for iPad might be released soon.
Google Maps desktop (web) version will get new features that will display images from Google Earth, Street view from one place.
The new Google Maps version will be tailored to the individual users using the same data Google Now uses.
Google Maps literally brought about eye-candy in the form of 3D environments that will compete with Apple Map’s vector based layouts.
Though there was no big announcement, Google IO showcased a host of improvements. In all fairness they did probably make a big announcement in Android Studio which should really improve app development process for tablets. Google might have also not released a new version of Android just to make sure that Android ecosystem was not fragmented too much. Currently only 25% of Android phones are on Jelly Bean (Android 4.1 & 4.2).
What are your views on Google’s announcements? Do drop in your comments.
WordPress will be turning 10 years old on 27th May, 2013. Also, our parent company rtCamp’s BuddyPress Media plugin has also crossed 50,000 downloads recently.
To celebrate these events, rtCamp is running a contest where you can write a review of our BuddyPress Media plugin and can qualify for a prize worth US $500.
How to participate?
Review BuddyPress Media and/or its addons in a blog post. Bouquets as well as brickbats are welcomed – just let it be an honest review.
Post a link of the blog post in the comments section here.
We will announce the prize winners on 28th May in celebration of WordPress turning 10 years old.
The winners will be selected on the criteria of originality, correctness, presentation and influence (more details)
Prizes
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Grand Prize
$500 worth of rtCamp store credit
1st Runner-up
$250 worth of rtCamp store credit
2nd Runner-up
$100 worth of rtCamp store credit
3 x Special prizes
$50 worth of rtCamp store credit each
The credit can be used on the rtCamp Store. The credit is transferable and winners can pass them on to friends, readers and users.
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As I mentioned earlier, the contest is run by our parent company rtCamp. So for further resources and help do visit the contest blog post as reference before you write the review.
If you like old video games from way back in the 80s or even 70s, then you might have heard of Atari’s ‘Breakout’. Today, to celebrate its 37th anniversary, Google put a Easter egg on its Google Image search results for “Atari Breakout”.
The results for “Atari Breakout” on Google Image search starts a full fledged version of the “Atari Breakout” on your browser itself.
Atari Breakout’s Interesting History
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If you have read Steve Jobs Biography, you might recollect that back in 1975 Steve Jobs was hired by Al Acorn to create a prototype of Breakout. The payment promised was for $750 but a bonus of $100 for every chip fewer than 50. Steve Jobs got in Steve Wozniak who at that time worked with HP. Steve Wozniak did produce a prototype with lesser chips used and legend has it that he was not passed on any of the bonus by Steve Jobs.
Atari did not find it feasible to use their manufacturing units to use Steve Wozniack’s prototype but they are rumored to have used his design for the actual game play.
Gmail seems to be facing downtime in India, Middle-East and South-East Asia.The service seems to be down though only for some users. I tried accessing my Gmail account but it gave me a “Error 502” message. Google has confirmed that there is a partial outage or rather a service disruption.
Initially Google apps status report did not show any disruption or outage. But it shows a service disruption update that confirms the service disruption is sporadic. In some cases a refresh of the page should work on getting Gmail up and running for users.
The latest update claims the service disruption is resolved. Though I picked up some reports on Twitter that the chat feature on Gmail seemed to not be up and running.
Picking up on a bit of Twitter chatter, there seems to be an on and off issue with Gmail’s service over the past couple of days in India. Though this might not impact the casual user but as this also affects Google Apps users who use it for work, it might cause a few inconvenient Monday mornings.
If you’re an OS X user, you must have tried AirDrop sometime. It’s a feature which lets you share files between Macs, provided they’re on the same Wi-Fi network. Now, though it does work like magic, it’s very limited.
It won’t work with iOS devices at all, for that matter. Instashare tries to fix this.
It brings dead simple file sharing to iOS and Mac devices (Android app soon!). You just open the app on your iOS device, drag the file and boom, it pops up on your Mac (or any other iOS device). It’s that simple. Your devices should be connected either by Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
It’s one of those apps which makes you think why this didn’t exist before. You could use iCloud for this, but then you have to wait for it to upload and sync and then download it. Then there is this terrible software called iPhoto which will take forever to actually work.
So, in short, Instashare works like magic and can potentially change your workflow.
Demo
The app can be downloaded for free, though there’s a paid ad-free version. A companion Android app (and may be, even Windows) is hopefully in the works.
