Thoughts from a Techie

I don't watch many awards shows. I only watch those with Taylor Swift on (you know, I'm a big fan of her); most of the times music shows. This is the first time I've seen a film awards show live. Well there must be something there for me isn't it? Taylor is again nominated for Best Original Song. Given she's only an occasional actress, being nominated for a Golden Globe for a song/score category is a big deal and I'm quite interested. The nominees for Best Original Song in a Motion Picture are: Atlas, from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire; Let It Go, from Frozen; Ordinary Love, from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom; Please Mr. Kennedy, from Inside Llewyn Davis; Sweeter Than Fiction, from One Chance. And the winner is, Ordinary Love, from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Quite deserving, I guessed. After all just looking at the nominees, not just the songs but the artists behind them and the films they represent, I figured it would be difficult for Taylor to...

Not a Google event so I'm not going to post my live blog here. First thing, I'm really frustrated at Apple for not providing a livestream. It boasted its own iTunes Festival being livestreamed to 100 countries, yet it couldn't provide the same for its own major event. Well one positive consequence of this is the huge amount of interaction due to the lack of livestream (heck, I can't type that fast watching a livestream!), but still there's much to be desired. Other than that, as with any other Apple products events, it's packed with a lot of hoo-hahs - 64-bit chip in a phone, fingerprint recognition, camera with burst, slow-mo, stabilization, fine-tuned exposure, etc. Seems to be a large focus on the "it just works" kind of stuff! Well I foresee a lot of Google+ Auto-Awesomes from this kind of camera. And well since there's no livestream I switched to my favorite Taylor Swift music to kind of escape the quiet and creepy night (it's 1am wher...

My liveblog of the just-ended July 24th Google event. It was a thrill to watch, as with any other Google event! Wed Jul 24 14:00:51 Staying up for 'breakfast with Sundar'... Nexus and 4.3 announcement hopefully! Wed Jul 24 15:18:53 RT @google: At 9am PT, tune in for our live streamed event w/ updates from the Chrome & Android teams http://t.co/phlSQMDsOQ Wed Jul 24 16:07:57 Sundar Pichai is on the stage let's begin this endless night Wed Jul 24 16:08:45 He's grown a bit of moustache compared to I/O Wed Jul 24 16:15:14 New Nexus 7 Wed Jul 24 16:18:04 1920x1200, 7.02", 323ppi... a lot more pixels! Wed Jul 24 16:20:59 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro, 2GB RAM, wireless charging, 1 extra hour of battery, Android 4.3 Wed Jul 24 16:25:21 Multi-User with Restricted Profiles, Bluetooth LE, OpenGL ES 3.0 Wed Jul 24 16:36:21 Google Play Games app going live Wed Jul 24 16:44:12 Wi-Fi 16GB for $229, 32GB for $299 Wed Jul 24 16:47:09 Nexus 7 video as usual to wrap up th...

The Android app is bracing the navigation drawer design cues from (most recently) Drive, Music, Books and Magazine. Other than that, nothing much. I must try it first before providing any (useful) insights. Guess no one is better than Google at helping us organize our lives. See the official blog post with the video at  http://gmailblog.blogspot.ca/2013/05/a-new-inbox-that-puts-you-back-in.html

Clear clues taken from the Music app design - that button and that swipe to show the sidebar. A hint to what's next in Google's design language?  

My primary comp is not good enough for the new Maps. Luckily enough I'm helping my friend reinstalling his comp, so I thought I could give it a drive for the sole purpose of testing. The new Maps is immersive and impressive. I get an almost full screen Maps view all the time (Explore view and detail cards only pop out when I click on them. And they give very useful information.) The vector-based maps seem to load faster also, and the animations are fairly smooth, given the unstable performance of the test unit. Only one slight annoyance though. It defaults to US and I have to search for 'Singapore' to get to my place. Well a more 'location-aware' Maps would be nice. I would expect an even faster Maps as the final product. Highly recommend everyone to sign up for the preview, if you have a decent computer with Chrome.

Hangouts app replacing the default Talk app.