Web service round-up

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I have been admittedly less than discreet in my exposure to the Internet in recent years. I tend to sign up for any service that looks mildly useful. The fact that GMail filters spam as efficiently as it does, has a lot to do with it. My thoughts on security and transparency must wait. Anyway…

So we have a lot of social networking sites now. For me, it actually started with early players like Ryze, LinkedIn and Multiply—all of which I found worthless for my needs (if I had any driving need for social interaction on the Web to begin with)

Then came Orkut, which was interesting, but ugly. I have a MySpace account, which I signed up for just to see what all the fuss was about. I didn’t get it. Still don’t. I finally settled on Facebook, which is my current social network of choice. It serves little, if any purpose in my life, save for linking me to some distant acquaintances who I would otherwise be completely disconnected from. The apps are disgusting, their default behaviour is to spam, and the whole thing seems to bring out the idiot in everyone. I think there’s a vast population of Web users out there that seem to have adopted a completely retarded, obnoxious view on how to conduct relationships and interactions online. I also think that this population will eventually be the majority. That is when I will put my fountain pen to better use. Anyway…

So there’s a bunch of other sites I’m registered with as well (Flickr, Twitter, Jaiku, Digg, etc)—all of which have some ‘social’ play. Unsurprisingly, there are now services that help you keep up with or update these sites in one place. Some that I’ve tried include:

Pownce: This was supposed to aggregate Twitter, Jaiku etc. My expected behaviour is to aggregate my ‘feeds’ from those accounts for a single view, as well as a one-to-many publish option. I don’t get any of this, which leads me to just not get it.

Friendfeed: Same as above. What I find is that it behaves just like another stand-alone service. What exactly does it do?

At this point, I think I will begin deleting my accounts from these services, if they allow it.

Picture 2.pngOne bright spot recently was the announcement of the new Evernote closed beta. After several sign-up requests, I finally got an invitation. This service, I believe, has the most potential to make an impact. The premise is simple: much like Google’s Notebook service, Evernote allows you to ‘clip’ pieces of web pages, images, whatever, and store them in an online archive. Where Evernote differs is in it’s more powerful off-line, native clients—currently available for Mac OSX, Windows and Windows Mobile.

But that’s not why I signed up. Evernote also does mobile really well. They publish your online notebooks as IMAP accounts, allowing me to access my notes from the iPhone’s own email client. There’s no search in this way, but tags show up as folders. Useful. There’s also a reasonable mobile web interface, which works as advertised. The killer app, in my opinion, is Evernote’s smart image recognition. You can take a picture of a label, billboard, business card or whatever, and just email it to your account. If the picture is not horrid, Evernote will recognize the text within it, index and enable search. Very cool!

So far, I’ve had mixed results with the recognition feature. A full-size 2MP image of a business card in low light just gave me a name, while a VGA snap of an ad-flex in good light worked better. The bookmarklet used to clip webpages is also spotty, but works for the most part. The potential is there though, and I’m hoping the service gets even better in this regard.

The elephant in the room

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As with the impending doom of Apple, Microsoft, your hair and libido, consider this with some skepticism/denial/salt:

Sramana Mitra comments in an article on Forbes.com:

…Yet, India, for all its glory, is still the world’s back office. India’s tech industry is a “services” industry. The Indians don’t do the thinking. The customers do. India executes.

Lets all get together and have a panel discussion on the ejaculation-inducing Indian tech industry. We’ll invite that large grey guy with the long nose and teeth that look like tusks. He’s a downer, but we’re too busy giving everybody handjobs to care.

She goes on:

Most of the 4 million people that the industry employs have now “arrived.” They have breezed through the milestones that their fathers had to toil all their lives to reach. A phone. A watch. A TV. A car. A house.

They are complacent. They will not take risks. They have “outsourced” thinking to their customers.

The thinking may have been outsourced, but the soaring self-esteem is all home-grown. Hopefully, the swagger, sneer, stylus-operated phone and flat-front pants will compensate for a lack of ability for anything other than the job of a glorified foreman.

There’s more. The author quotes some Forbes stats on the growth in salaries in India. This will be the fifth consecutive year with hikes being above the 10% range. Yay for finally affording that loan for a 2BHK in Lokhandwala/Malad/Kandivli. However,

Assuming a 15% year-to-year salary hike rate, and a 2007 cost advantage of 1:3 in favor of India, if U.S. wages remain constant, India’s cost advantage disappears by 2015. Then what?

I never had a chance at being hired by TCS/Wipro/Infosys/Satyam. Thank fucking $DIVINITY.

Disclaimer: I have good friends in the IT/ITeS industry, and they’re all very intelligent people. Some of the very few, sadly.

Pity Hits

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I’m not interesting, really. All my hits are now coming from ET. Please go there. Even I prefer to read her over my own drivel. Oh, and do check out her/our photos from our trip to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Nazareth.

Moving on.

iPhone status: 1.1.2, jailbroken, activated, using with X-Sim. Amazing what market demand and trader ingenuity can do for you in the motherland. X-Sims are flexible, reportedly work even with the 1.1.3 firmware, and are available over the counter for a minor premium. No fucking with the baseband while you wait for the rapid and dangerous revision cycle that is the 1.1.3 jailbreak effort. Stick with 1.1.2 till everyone else has bricked and recovered.

iPhoned

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So I got an iPhone after becoming dissatisfied with the E61 experience. My option was the E51, but after playing with it for a bit I realized that it was just an incremental upgrade—fixing what I thought was wrong with the E61. The iPhone is different enough with a feature-set that is attractive to me. Some rationale:

  • EDGE-only: We don’t have 3G in India, and even if we did, it would be rubbish (ask any ‘broadband’ user). Also, client processing speed is more important, which is where the iPhone scores.
  • Touchscreen-only: I’m not a fan, but using your thumbs on a virtual keyboard beats hunt-and-peck with a tiny stylus. I’m improving with the iPhone’s keyboard, but still not up to E61 speed.
  • No memory cards: 8GB is enough. I can never fill ET‘s 5GB mp3 player.
  • Expensive: Not really. You’d pay more for recent N-series phones.
  • N95 is better: er, no.

Of course, since I bought it on the 11th from the Apple store in NYC, it runs the latest firmware, which has not yet been unlocked. Which means I have an iPod Touch. Still, with the cool browser and WiFi, it makes a damn fine Internet tablet. Some observations:

  • WiFi antenna is better than in my E61. Usable signal in my room.
  • It’s not perfect. It can act sluggish at times, but even that is leagues better than what I’m used to. No crashes so far.
  • Email client is functional, but doesn’t seem to do true push email. IMAP support exists, but I don’t know if it does IDLE.
  • Earbuds are horrible. Seriously, if you bought an iPod and think the sound is great, you are a sad, ignorant poser. It’s like Steve Jobs mandated “midrange above all else”.
  • WiFi does not work with some models of iMac/MacBook/PowerBook using the built-in Airport and Internet Connection Sharing. It worked fine for me yesterday but died after a few hours and never came back. The Internets have no solution, nor does Apple support.
  • Camera is discreet, which is important to some people.
  • Buttons are excellent. Just the right amount of relief; tactile.
  • Front face is a fingerprint magnet. Nay, it’s worthy of gathering forensic evidence. Keep RayBan-wipie-cloth handy.
  • Phone is dense, heavy. Must get a cover. Doesn’t look like it would survive a fall too well.
  • Google Maps doesn’t have cell-tower triangulation. I’m addicted to that feature on my E61.
  • Browser is bloody brilliant. Even though it uses the same core as the S60v3 browser, it’s just heaps better. I suppose it helps that everyone has or wants to publish an iPhone-optimized site.
  • It needs a device-wide search. Or any search for that matter. I’m sure flicking through hundreds of contacts to find the one I want will get lame real quick.
  • Battery life with heavy usage is about par for the course. I think I’d get about a day. However, this is with a LOT of WiFi use and with the GSM radio hunting for signal all the time. In actual use, I think I will be satisfied.

I hope it’s a short wait until someone finds a 1.1.2 unlock solution. So far I’ve done a jailbreak and activation, staying away from all the nasty baseband poking (which doesn’t work for 1.1.2 OTB anyway). There are reports of people being able to unlock it today, but at exorbitant rates and with a big question-mark on future viability. There are too many flaky iPhones out there to risk doing something that you may not be able to reverse.

Android thoughts

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I used to hate Java. It was slow, then it got faster. I can never keep up with the acronyms, and I didn’t find it particularly easier to code with than in C. Anyway, I’m not a developer and millions love it, so what do I know?

One thing that did interest me was Java as a mobile platform. I don’t think I ever posted this before, but there used to be something called SavaJe, which was an all-Java platform phone. They even did a proof-of-concept. Tim Bray played with it and I agreed with his conclusions. I quote,

…the notion of having a phone that any Java geek can program to do whatever—if it actually happens—isn’t just a game-changer, it’s a world-changer.

He was also probably talking to the right people at the time…

The vibe I get from my mobile-savvy friends is that a lot of people think Linux+Java is the mobile platform of the future.

I think what we have with Android is just this—a phone any Java geek can program to do whatever. This, I think, has the potential to spawn some crazy third-party development, helped along surely by Google’s $10 mn prize stash.

I’m still in doubt as to whether Android-based phones will be crazy-cool devices as the iPhone is. A platform needs to be implemented real nice on some real nice hardware to create something desirable. LG, Samsung and HTC have some nice(?) phones, but they’re not Apple. The Android videos show prototypes that are neat, but not iPhone-quick.

Unrealistic wish: iPhone hardware, Android software.