Three Suggestions to Make Google Photos even better

Google Photos is one of best Apps for managing photos online.  I started liking it more after they allowed 'unlimited' storage of high-quality photos.  I also like many of the enhancements to the App rolled out in the last year.

But, one of the key functionality I liked in the earlier version is missing in the newer versions.  I like to move photos to Albums and keep the 'inbox' view empty.  However, in the new version, Google took out that view and instead shows all photos in a chronological view regardless of if they were tagged to any album/s or not.

I sent the following feedback to Google today and hoping to hear back in a few days.

(This message was sent on Sep 9, 2017)
Dear Google

I like Google Photos and particularly the ability house ALL my photos.  However, I find the usability is not optimal.  I would like to see three improvements done to Google Photos.

1. Ability to 'search' for the album name when adding photos to Album.

2. A view with only photos that are NOT added to any album.  (I want ALL my photos to be part of some album and presently there is no way to figure out which one isn't.  This functionality was present earlier, but no longer available.)

3. Enhance the existing 'chronological' photo view to also include the album in which a particular photo has been added.

Scaling The Great Cyber Wall of China

It's widely known that the China has one of the most elaborate cyber censorship in the world.  The alleged purpose being to keep the seditious content away from Chinese.  For example anything to do with Tiananmen Square incidents of 1989 or about Falun Gong.  Simply put, China wants to control what its citizens get to see on the net.  Many countries including India does it to some extent and China is said to the most elaborate setup for this purpose.

One of my frustrations of China trips, besides food has the inability to access sites like NYTimes, FB or Blogger.  I first wrote about it in 2006, during my first visit to Beijing, China.  Since then the Internet as we know has grown beyond our collective imagination and continues to pervade more and more part of our life.  With such a spread, can China (or India for that matter)  really control Internet access?

In this trip, I found a way to scale the Great Cyber Wall of China.. at a cost.

China's (other countries) Internet filtering has created business opportunities for a few.  There are several VPN providers that help circumvent the Internet filtering.  I am using one called Express VPN that can route traffic via servers around the world.  I am now connected to LA, but can opt to connect other parts of the world as well.  In fact, ExpressVPN can also be asked to choose the most 'efficient' route as well.

It costs USD 12.95 per month and so far it has worked well for me.  The only challenge is when I am in a slow connectivity zone, I cannot connect to multiple VPN software.  I have not been able to connect to my office VPN and ExpressVPN at the sametime when connected via 'slow' network.  Otherwise, things are working well for me.

Also, ExpressVPN support has been excellent.  I used their email and online support twice and each time they came through well.  They were quick to respond and most importantly solved my problem at the first shot.

Besides avoiding the Internet filtering, some of my US colleagues are using the VPN software to access their Netflix and Hulu accounts which are country specific.

Net net, No wall is foolproof, be it the fence between India and Pakistan or the Great Cyber Wall of China.

Google - Integrate YouTube and Google Plus - Instant Upload

I love the Instant Upload feature of Android.  This feature auto-magically uploads to the photos / videos to a private album which then can be shared G+, added to Picasa albums or even used in Blogger as appropriate.   I doubly like the fact that the 'instant upload' transmits both photos and videos.

But, what I don't understand is why I publish the 'instant upload' videos to YouTube.  Isn't that the natural thing to do? or Am I missing something basic here?

Here is the integration I am looking for:

1. Upload all photos & videos via 'Instant Upload' to a private album
2. Enable this instant upload album be accessible via YouTube like  Google Plus, Picasa, Blogger
3. Net net, Allow the videos uploaded via 'Instant Upload' to be published via YouTube

This looks rather easy & basic.. wonder why Google hasn't done this already.. 

Lineup Same Now.. Let the Game Begin

Lineup same now.. well almost...

The lineup of devices is now the same between Apple and Google.. Phone, Tablet & Mini Tablet..

While Apple introduced a mini version of its popular iPad lastweek, Google announced a maxi version of its tablet called Nexus 10 this week.  Now both of them have a phone, mini and maxi tablets.  But that's where the similarities end.

Before we see the differences, Let me first disclose that I am 'Google fan' and have two of the three devices in discussion (older versions of phone and mini tablet).  That said, ironically typing this post on a Mac Book Air.. (that story for a different day..).

Now to the differences:

Price - Google devices are lot cheaper than the Apple's across all 3 devices for comprable or higher spec.  But, is that alone sufficient to wean the customers away from Apple?  While the price variance might not matter that much in mature markets, would be a factor in growth markets like India.  With a price difference of about INR 5000+ for any comprable device between Apple and Android, the later clearly rules. (Interestingly, Nexus devices are not officially available in India yet.. hope they do so soon.. ).

The business of Locking Phones - There is a perfect collusion between phone manufacturers and telco companies in most of the major markets.  (There is of course a business rationale spin for this !!!!)   In fact, it exists for Apple phones in India as well.  Google is not playing that game and anyone can buy Nexus 4 for USD 299 while an unlocked iPhone will cost USD 750 in US and the same is close to 45,000+ in India.  Is that kind of price differential worth to have Apple in my hands?  I don't think so..

Store - This is where Apple wins hands down.  They have lot more entrenched iTunes store than the new kid on the block - Google Play.  But Google is fast catching up and the difference would become negligible very soon.

So, if you are in the market to buy a phone or tablet this festive season.. what should you buy?  My take is, the real question is not about an isolated device.. but about the eco-system.  I woud n't recommend buying an Apple phone and Google tablet or vice versa.

Apple and Google are creating two different eco-systems and will continue to tightly integrate and make it difficult for customers to switch.  Both of them will keep playing catch up game through every launch.  So the real question is what eco-system you prefer..

If you are used Google mail, Google Drive, instant upload and other google accessories.. then stick with Android.. but  If you are an Apple fan and like Mac, iTunes & iCloud then go the Apple route... Regardless of your choice, I wouldn't recommend mixing up the devices.. ie,, Apple phone and Android tablet.

So what about Microsoft and Nokia in this game? Ask me this question next year... I might have a view... but for now.. both are in the catchup mode.. lagging far behind.

Before you ask about Blackberry.. they lost the plot..

ps: this comparison is mainly about mobile devices and does not include Laptops.. There is of course a big gap here for Google and they must be cooking up something.. and that might not be Chrome devices :-)
  

CloudWash

Is your software cloud ready ?

Unfortunately, Dilbert may be reflecting what's going on in the industry today.  Cloud is a jargon and everyone wants to use.  Few years back, SOA was the fad and now it seems to be the turn of Cloud.. much used and abused term.

What's your definition of Cloud Computing?

Google Plus Instant Upload & YouTube

I am unable to 'upload' videos on to YouTube from Google Plus 'Instant Upload' folder.. My question is Why can't I share the 'Instant Upload' feature of Google Plus to load videos on to YouTube?

Make no mistake, I love the the instant upload feature of Android Phones.  It automagically uploads photos and videos the moment I take them (assuming data connectivity).  These instant uploads are stored in a 'private folder' in Google Plus which allows me to share them and allows me to add them to a Picasa album.

Also, Blogger allows me to insert 'Photos from Phone' on to my posts.. But I am not able to 'upload' videos from 'Instant Upload' folder on to YouTube.. Why?

Did I get this wrong or this is truly a problem?  Your thought??

My New Toy - Google Galaxy Nexus

I am lucky.. I had ordered for my Google Galaxy Nexus before the 'ban' enforced in US.  There is a 'patent infringement' fight going on between Samsung and Apple and this phone got in the middle and a US court had temporarily banned selling this phone in US... Boy I was lucky.. Right..? I think so..

Packing is slick but not as 'cool' as the iPhone packing

My initial take:

Migration was a breeze: My earlier phone was also a Google (Nexus One) so migration was a breeze.  All I had to do was to put in my SIM and Google ID.  It automagically download my profile and all my apps got them ready for me.  However, it did not have the data.  For example, I had quite bit data in 'mytracks' app which did not come with the application.  I had to manually manage it.

Larger Screen: The screen is considerably larger and brighter.  While it make it easier shoot photos and browse pages, larger form factor does make it awkward to carry it around in hand or shirt pocket.  I am still looking for a holster (belt pouch) to carry it around.

Faster  Everything is fast and it quite appreciable.  Apps load faster, camera take faster pictures.. everything is faster..

Camera - Two cameras, front and back.  The quality is better and it take faster pictures.

Face Recognition: I played around with it only for a day and liked it.  Once I loaded some of my office apps, it mandated another security layer which made the face recognition defunct.  In the limited time, Meera, my daughter was trying to trick the phone to unlock with my photo and couldn't.  But I found the experiment quite interesting, so we both played with it.  Took a picture / video of me and showed it to phone and see if it recognizes my face and opens.. it did not.  The phone was smarter to know when I showing my real face vs the photo face.. not bad..

overall, I am happy with the phone and need to play a little bit more with Ice Cream Sandwich, to get a better handle of it.  But, by the time I do that, I would have gotten the Jelly Bean download which I am told is 'cooler' than the Ice Cream.  Yes, Galaxy Nexus would be the first phone to get the Jelly Bean upgrade directly from Google, sometime this month... Yuppie..

Negatives..
I am Google fan, so I may be bit biased here.  But other than the 'bulky' factor, I can't think of any at this time. Oh yes, one more minor thing.. Nexus one came with a pouch and this one didn't..

Google Voice - Potential to Change the Telco Landscape

Google never ceases to surprise us and with their voice launch they are at it again. It must not come as a surprise with its acquisition of GrandCentral. Nevertheless, it is surprising to see how they have brought many things together and launched a unique service that wasn't available as GrandCentral.

Google voice is obviously a competitor to Skype's domination in this space. However, Google has taken a totally different interface route. While Skype's predominant interface is via computer, Google voice will use any telephone to connect to Google Voice. And, that my friends is cool. With that one product decision, Google Voice has become a competitor to Telco companies across the world.

We could connect to Google Voice from any phone and dial out anyone we want anywhere in the world. Now imagine the possiblities and the distruptive nature this offering. For example, you could call US for free from anywhere in India via Google voice. Imagine the impact on the Telco companies on the International dialing business (particularly to US). Yes, we can do free calls to US now via Skype but that requires a computer.

I was all pumped up to play with Google Voice, but learnt that it is available only to GrandCentral customers for now and will be made available to other in 'weeks'. Can't wait..

Twitter Rage

Why all this Twitter Rage?
I have no idea.. but I seem to be bitten by that rage as well.. I like the concept of posting SMS like messages easily but disappointed that I get no feed back. I do want to get back to 'blogging' (and continue Twitting) gradually and slowly.

My crystal ball says that the day of Google introducing Twitter like 'micro blogging' in Blogger is not very far off.. what say you?

Twitter - First Impressions

I have seen and heard about Twitter for a while now.. but plunged in to the world of Twitter just a couple of weeks back. (you can follow me here).

I still haven't figured out if Twitter is beneficial or just time drain.

If it is beneficial then How?. I understand it can be used / leveraged as a virtual chat with all of your followers and get immediate responses (though that is optional). I have only 7 followers now so, not much instant interactions taken place yet.

When I got in to it, I wondered what is the benefit of telling the world 'what am I doing'?. But, I quickly came to the conclusion that it is not about 'what am I doing' but about posting short / crisp observations / comments or questions.

I like the fact I can 'post' short messages (limit 140 characters) that are to the point and gets the point across. More importantly, I like the fact that I can tweet via multiple devices. Now I am comfortable tweeting from firefox browser via Twitterfox and from my Blackberry via Twitterberry besides twitter web site.

In summary, I am still ambivalent about Twitter's real benefit, but I know one thing for sure.. I will continue to Tweet as I like the concept of posting short messages from multiple devices quickly and easily.

Go on become a twitter and let me know what you think.. I am particularly interested in your read on :

1. What's your take on Twitter?
   
2. What feature do you like and don't?
3. What's the big difference between blogging and twitting? Why not simply Blog ? Why add another channel?
   

Unlocking iPhone

This story caught my attention because of the earlier struggle I had with unlocking a Blackberry bought via eBay. I bought a Blackberry advertised as unlocked to work anywhere in the world only to find that it was locked to a carrier in US (AT&T). Tried multiple avenues to unlock and got it done eventually but not before shelling out an extra USD 30 for it.

So, I am kind of glad to see a unlock software coming out for iPhone. It's called yellowsn0w and you can find step by step instructions here... I haven't used this one myself, but if you play with it.. kindly do let me know..

iPhone prices in India are ridiculously higher, close USD 750. Ofcourse both Airtel and Vodafone cite some 'liecensing' / 'royalty' reasons for keeping the price so high. From a consumer perspective, this does no good. I hope this unlock software makes more iPhones available in the 'grey' market forcing the carriers to bring down the prices in the 'white' market.

Google Chrome - Do We Need Another Browser?

Google thinks so.. say that much in their official blog..

We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.

Its been a while since I moved away from IE and use Firefox for all my browsing and have been quite happy with it. Now, I am interested to find out what Google has done better. Sundar Pitchai and Linus Upson (of Google) talk about how the web world has changed in the last 10 years and the need for the browser to run applications and not merely display pages. With that and simplicity as their mantra they have gone about creating the Chrome from ground up. They have even developed new java script (V8) which promises to speed up things. Chrome will be out tomorrow and I can't wait to download and play with it. More on it in a week.

Till then, Pl read this comic book and get to know Chrome,

EMail Limitations

We all live and swear by our email these days. We are attached to emails so much that we get fidgety if not on the grid even for a few hours. Yes, email is great and a great way to communicate across the world almost instantaneously at little or no cost. With unlimited storage and always on connectivity, it is easy to see why email is the most used technology internet functionality and kind of infectious.

But does it always aide in improved productivity? This interesting article thinks otherwise and makes a case for good old face to face meetings / teams in some cases.

“When you communicate with a group you only know through electronic channels, it’s like having functional Asperger’s Syndrome — you are very logical and rational, but emotionally brittle,” Professor Shirky said.

“I’m part of a far-flung distributed network that at one point was designing a piece of software for sharing medical data; we worked mostly by conference calls and e-mail, and it was going nowhere. So we finally said we’d all fly to Boston and get together for two days, just sit in a room and hash it out.”

What's your take? How does email help you and where does it fail you?

Blogger Stress???

I am NOT Om Malik of GigaOM by any stretch of imagination, but can kind of understand and relate to this story. However, I don't think it is just related to blogging but can be generalized to any profession and how one internalizes / responds to the challenges.

Math Help from India !!!

Photo courtesy: nytimes.com

Interesting article (registration required) about the next wave in offshoring called 'person to person' offshoring. In this model math / science coaching, personal assistance and other kind of help that are person to person nature are being offshored. This business model is still nascent but might as well have lot of opportunities.

Is this site legal?

This site claims to help you bypass compulsory registration by providing user-id / password for many of the popular restricted sites including India Today. Is this legal?

EMail Stress

EMail Stress
I may be afflicted by it. I do constantly check my various in-boxes frequently and see what's going on though I control the urge to respond immediately. I have tried following the prescription but have relapsed in to my old ways.

So the solution lies in not monitoring your mails constantly but instead setting aside a dedicated email reading times to catch up on messages, and giving yourself time to reply.

How about you? How do you handle the deluge of emails coming your way each minute? (Of the six trillion sent in 2006, some ought to have been for you).

Who is Editing Wikipedia?

In a short span of time Wikipedia has become the primary source of information for lot of people including me. Nowadays, I first visit wikipedia to find information on almost anything from Tamil to Madras bashai, everything seems to be profiled here.

One of the primary reasons for its stupendous growth and acceptance is that is all user generated content in a generally accepted framework. So users around the globe use and provide enriched content which otherwise would have been difficult and expensive to generate.

But then allowing the users to edit the content also has a downside and that has to do the the quality and authenticity of the content. Wikipedia has put in place some governance mechanisms while preserving the overall collaborative concept. One of the recent innovative additions is a tool called wikipedia scanner.

Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of Cal Tech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses

While the scanner cannot identify the individuals who edited, it can zoom in on the network used to make the changes. Look at what the scanner unearthed:

1. CIA network used to edit the profile of Iranian President
2. US Democratic party network used to edit the profile of Rush Limbaugh (popular right wing radio talk show host)
   
3. Vatican network used to edit the profile of Jerry Adams (Sinn Fenn leader)
   
4. Diebold network used to delete information from the company's own profile.
   

While this kind of scanning will check people editing content with malicious intent to a some extent. What is really the mainstay of wikipedia is the self regulation and community policing. Like when someone using Diebold network deleted passages they thought embarrassing to the company, it was quickly restored back by another contributor who rebuked the previous editor with a pointed warning "Please stop removing content from Wikipedia. It is considered vandalism".

update # 1 - Rush Limbaugh spelling corrected..

Working Class Millionaires

Working Class Millionaires

Interesting article about millionaires who still slog it out in the Silicon Valley salt mines. They continue to slog because 1) like what they are doing 2) feel what they have isn't enough. Regardless of the motivation, I found the article very insightful not only because of the money front but also from the innovation front. Does the 'money' motivation drive the innovation engine? What's your take?

Party Over ?

For Indian ITES industry? That's the question Business Week is asking. It is citing issues like 1) H1B crunch, 2) need to move up the food chain 3) brand value 4) lack of innovation culture etc., as the reasons for raising this question. Interestingly, they also cite 'conceptual Brahmanism' as one of the gating factors..

But while India lacks a formal innovation culture, one would never know from the assumed superiority over foreign rivals. Indian firms are simply unable, culturally, to absorb a Western company. Industry analysts say Indian companies such as Infosys are hierarchical, and have an elitist view of their business and suffer from "conceptual Brahmanism," referring to the group at the upper echelon of the Indian caste system.

While the Indian IT companies themselves acknowledged some of these issues and are addressing them. Does it inherently mean the party is over for Indian IT companies? My answer is NO. Well, it may not be wild party like this for long.. but they will be around and transform.

From the Y2K days of software factories, Indian IT companies have come a long way in their offerings and their perception in the global stage. In the early days, Indian IT companies weren't even in the radar screen of large IT services company as a threat. Now, every IT services not only watch the Indian players very closely, they themselves have an India play.

From the Why India ? questions of 90s, every company must now have an India play and this often includes some kind of relationship with Indian IT companies.

Having said that, I also agree with several points raised in this article. Indian IT will not be able to continue grow at the same clip they have been doing for the past few years and their profit will continue to squeezed. Also, Indian companies need to reposition themselves to being trusted consultants not just going vendors.

What's your take?