A comparison between Mango and Ice Cream Sandwich

This is summer and we are all enjoying mangoes and ice cream! I am not the exception! Only difference is that for a gadgets fan like me, Mango is actually the latest version of the Windows Phone OS and Ice Cream Sandwich is the latest Google Phone OS (Android). I am using two phones and trying to find out which OS is more exciting. This post is an account of my experiences with both.

How Mango scores over Ice Cream Sandwich

It's fast! Very responsive. That is what everyone wants a phone to be.

Mango wins a user's trust with its Microsoft tag. We all use windows and whether we like it or not, we have to use it. And once you get used to it, others just seem non-user-friendly.


Mango is very intuitive with the most obvious things in the most obvious places. Phone, messaging, mail are right on top where you expect them to be. Live tiles continue to provide you updates. It integrates contacts from facebook, google once you sign in, gets the photos, updates right onto the tile if the contact has his/her personal tile.


Mango has many famous apps on the marketplace. Though there are not as many as Android / Apple, it surely is catching up. Actually, the lack of apps makes it a 'My' phone rather than the kids' phone!

The most important feature that I like about WP7 is that even if my wi-fi modem is on but is not connected to the internet (service provider glitches!), the phone internet does not die. It gets the data from the EDGE network instead which Android does not. Windows has also got a good battery management which is just pathetic in Android, all versions.

Another point where Mango scores is contact management. You can group the contacts and have all their updates at one place. And mind you, it's the updates for only the members of the group. Sure, Android has the group feature but it has not been given its due importance as it has been in Windows. (I found out that Android has this feature as I was writing this blog...that shows how much importance it has been given.) And it really is useful!

Mails is another cool feature.Outlook for Windows Phone is really good with its Conversation view feature. All the mails in a conversation are grouped together and are easily accessible. It's really good when you have to refer to the old emails in the same thread.

How Ice Cream Sandwich scores over Mango

Zune, seriously? To sync your Windows Phone with your computer, you need Zune. Windows Media Player is passe. Good ol' media player... Zune UI is amazing, no doubt, but too heavy. Media player fares better in my books, anytime! As against this, I just connect my Android phone to computer and manage it the way I want! And I am talking about plain simple Android OS here on Nexus S and not some flavor modified by OEMs.


Here I cannot resist mentioning 'Courier' the concept which did not pass through Microsoft's filters. It really 'was' exciting! To know more, follow this link: Microsoft Courier

Ice Cream Sandwich also has the equally intuitive interface and has things in proper place.  It has 5 screens where you can have shortcuts and widgets. Live tiles are widgets in a way, but the 3 screens really win (Though I never use the two extreme screens, they are useless) against a long vertical list of applications to scroll through. They let you have an amazing number of shortcuts and live updates. And to add to that, on all these screens, you have the 5 most important things 'always accessible'. The 4 shortcuts on the bottom along the menu icon and the search bar.

Android Play Store is one point where Android scores over Windows. There are so many apps available! My kids love the Talking friends, the ninja jumping off the walls etc. etc. Another thing I love about android is it integrates seamlessly with all essential Google services. I cannot live without the GMail or the GTalk.

Conclusion

Overall, both Mango and Ice Cream Sandwich are good in their own ways and both lack a few useful features. And another important finding is that I am still waiting for an iPhone to add to the mix. Somebody gift me an iPhone!

Test

I opted to follow my own blog! I am writing this post just to see how it works out! Best of luck, google!

Space travel made easy!

For ancient man or neanderthal, vastness of the Earth was probably unknown. He probably knew that the land under his feet is huge. But how huge? He had no idea. Apart from that scaling those distances on known ways of transports was unimaginable. By no stretch of thought he could have imagined that he would go round the earth in his lifetime... neither did he do that. Air travel was just a figment of his imagination. But today it is very much real.

Today we are neanderthals with respect to space travel. With theory of relativity, easy interstellar travel seems impossible by any stretch of imagination. But the future man will invent the "air crafts" to scale these distances very easily. In time after that, man will feel difficult to imagine a life without space travel in the same way today we see life impossible without a.... the list is so long... TV? Cell phone? Cars? You name it!

Are we being GM?

I don't know if I am on a 'GM' diet these days. But by GM I don't mean the General Motors diet. I mean Genetically Modified food. I used to believe that India is still far away from GM food.

Gene modification is insertion or deletion of genes. Crops are generally modified to give a higher yield. That is how the GM first started. It is regarded as second green revolution. To meet the demands of an ever increasing population, several scientists feel that GM food with higher production is the answer. While others feel that there is already enough food and that the problem is not of quantity but that of distribution and politics.

My take on the GM food: We are what we eat. From a little baby to a young adult, our body grows manifold. The only input we take from outside world is food and drinks. Whatever body growth occurs is due to this intake. So we really are whatever we eat. Should we not eat right to get it all right?

We also know that mind and body are very closely connected. Does it not then make sense that what we eat also affects our mind and thinking? So, if we are eating all genetically modified food, are we not getting ourselves modified genetically? There are only a few people who hold the key to genetic modification of the crops. These few can now determine how the human race as a whole would be modified! What a power to hold.

Though the results of genetic modification will not be visible in near future, they will be felt in the long run. Start growing your own food........!

A thought from Gautam Buddha

I came across a Gautam Buddha story and liked it a lot! Here it goes:

Once Buddha was walking from one town to another town with a few of his followers. This was in the initial days. While they were traveling, they happened to pass a lake. They stopped there and Buddha told one of his disciples, "I am thirsty. Do get me some water from that lake there."

The disciple walked up to the lake. When he reached it, he noticed that right at that moment, a bullock cart started crossing through the lake. As a result, the water became very muddy, very turbid. The disciple thought, "How can I give this muddy water to Buddha to drink!"

So he came back and told Buddha, "The water in there is very muddy. I don't think it is fit to drink." After about half an hour, again Buddha asked the same disciple to go back to the lake and get him some water to drink. The disciple obediently went back to the lake.

This time too he found that the lake was muddy. He returned and informed Buddha about the same.
After sometime, again Buddha asked the same disciple to go back.

The disciple reached the lake to find the lake absolutely clean and clear with pure water in it. The mud had settled down and the water above it looked fit to be had. So he collected some water in a pot and brought it to Buddha.

Buddha looked at the water, and then he looked up at the disciple and said," See what you did to make the water clean. You let it be.... and the mud settled down on its own - and you got clear water.

Your mind is also like that! When it is disturbed, just let it be. Give it a little time. It will settle down on its own. You don't have to put in any effort to calm it down. It will happen. It is effortless.."

Another Quick Firefox Tip

In Ubuntu, if you are using firefox, clicking on address bar (urlbar) does not select the entire text. For those who come to linux from windows environment this is irritating. In windows, not in just IE but even in firefox, click on address bar behaves the same way i.e. it selects the entire text.

There is a very small tweak required to achieve this in linux / Ubuntu. In address bar type 'about:config' and press enter. Click on 'I'll be careful, I promise!' button. Type 'urlbar' in the filter bar. Find entry 'browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll' and set it to true by double clicking on it.

You are all set now! Click and enjoy!

Tips & Tricks with Firefox

I love firefox! Who doesn't!? But here are certain tweaks that will make your firefox even better! Read through and implement them...

How to make firefox faster?
On a broadband connection, you can make your firefox load pages must faster by changing some of it's default settings. Here is how to:

1.Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining,

network.http.proxy.pipelining, and

network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll load pages MUCH faster now!

Courtesy: Forevergeek.com

How to have 'inline autocomplete' feature in firefox?
In Internet Explorer, you can set the feature of 'inline autocomplete' on to enable auto complete the URL as you type it in the address bar. Firefox has the autocomplete feature but lacks the 'autofill' element that IE has. This was one feature I missed the most in firefox. However, you can change this!
1. Go to 'about:config' as in point 1 above.
2. Search for browser.urlbar.autoFill. This feature is disabled by default. To enable it, doubleclick on the entry.

Voila! The address bar now auto-completes exactly as it does in Internet Explorer!

Want to make a copy of all the settings that you just changed?
You have now made a lot of changes to the firefox's default settings. Are these settings portable? Can you take them with you wherever you go? Can you easily replace them in your other machines so that everytime you don't have to go to about:config? Here is how to do that:
1. Open windows explorer and go to the folder where you installed your firefox. (In most cases, it should be 'C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox [ver]'.
2. Once in that folder, go inside to folder '\Data\profile'. In this folder there is a file named 'prefs.js'. This file is all you need. Make a backup of this file. When you want your settings to be replicated, just replace this file with the one you just backed up.
3. To see what is inside the file, make a copy of it, rename it to 'prefs.txt'. Windows will come up with a warning that you should not do it. Ignore it by clicking on 'OK' button. You can now open the file and see what's inside!

The day the Earth stood still (Part 9)

My fellow Humans of 2020 A.D., my message till now has given you a background to our conditions today. We don’t know when you will receive this message or if you will receive it at all. We don’t know what will happen in the 15 days that will be left to us after we send this message.

Our request to you the man of 2020 A.D is that please grant the space exploration the due importance that it deserves. Today, if only we had moved to exoplanets that we could have survived this crisis. There would be different worlds to relocate to and the Earth could be abandoned. We realize this today when our existence, the existence of humans as a species is endangered due to a decision that was taken back then. It could be the existence of life itself that is in danger since humans is the only species that exists today. We have heard fables that there used to be other species and if that is true then we would like to let you know that for us it is just a fable.

We would also like to request you not to use the energy resources extravagantly. Energy is the life force of the Universe. Please use it judiciously. Today I can say that though total energy in the Universe remains the same, the one that is available to us is limited.

Please determine your priorities as, representative of entire Earth, and if tomorrow you happen to meet other species then as life itself. A lot of energy is wasted in meeting unnecessary demands of the species. Political will is necessary to divert this wasteful expenditure to a productive one. You can discriminate between a productive and unproductive expenditure only when you think for Earth as a whole and not restrict yourselves to the borders of countries as they exist in your times.

Apart from Energy crisis, there can be a possibility of Earth being destroyed by a passing asteroid or a collision with any other celestial object. It did not happen till my time but if I am able to change the past and get you to be space faring species, it might change the dynamics considerably and make such a collision a possibility.

So, here I am begging you to remember and act on the things I have already said. If you receive the message, you would know that I have spent the last blast of energy on this message. Your and our future depends on you. Wish you and us all the best!”

And the message ended.

The day the Earth stood still (Part 8)

Josey was disappointed when I reminded him that no solution to the current crisis was possible in the 15 days of life that would be left after the transmission of the message. That the Emergency Code would not allow such use of the energy at the cost of wiping off existence as human race from the universe. Survival was more important.

He was disappointed that I failed to see the light. He reminded me of the discussions that were carried out for so many days and how logically every seemingly feasible solution was ruled out. He went over each and every alternative in detail and more importantly how it failed miserably. There was no light at the end of any tunnel.

He seemed pretty calm and rather unaffected by the crisis. He kept on insisting that the only solution to the crisis was to avoid it. And suddenly, those words started making sense. Yes, the only solution really was to avoid the crisis.

However, both of us knew that the Central Committee would never reach a decision as difficult as this. Decision between 6-8 more months of endless and fruitless discussions or a solution the effect of which would never be know to us with only a 15 days life reserve left was indeed a difficult one. The only way was the illegal way of doing it on our own. As Josey said, it was not difficult. Still the project was not in the system as a ‘C’ project. C project meant that the project was completed and handed over by EnerTech R&D for implementation. EnerTech R&D does not have any access or rights to the projects that it has handed over as completed. Since this was not a ‘C’ project, Josey retained all his rights.

Josey had already determined the time to which the message should be delivered. He had chosen year 2020 A.D. That was the year when the President of a country known back then as the United States of America had presented his budget. The budget remarkably cut the spending on unproductive expenditure on research in the space exploration and had granted unusually high portion to EnergyTech initiative which later on became the EnerTech. That was the year that benchmarked the expenditure on space exploration and EnerTech. The spending on EnerTech continued to grow indiscriminately and space research was not given the due attention it should have received. It was always considered unproductive…

The day the Earth stood still (Part 7)

During dinner that evening, I decided to approach Josey and ask him if he had any solution. Josey obliged willingly. He told me that he had created a machine few years back which was a sort of time machine. He said that the research on the machine was going on for thousands of years and he was not the one who invented it. It was only his luck that it was completed in his tenure as an ETzen.

He explained to me that the machine could pass a message to the past. The message would not go in any physical form, but could be fed into the minds of the entire Earth at any specified point in the past. Fortunately, there was no limit on the length of the message. Only constraint was that it required huge amount of energy to transmit the message. So much that we would be left with only 15 days of energy supply after transmission of the message. This was unthinkable.

We could have found a solution to our problem in the 6-8 months that we had. With Emergency Code under operation, the available time could have extended by a month or two as medical care was stopped and the dying were allowed to die irrespective of the Human Rights Memorandum (HRM) as Emergency Code superseded the HRM. This could raise the hope for the living. Sometimes, brutal measures had to be taken. And this was that time. Emergency Code had been envisaged to come into operation when the survival of human beings as a species was considered threatened.