Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Google+ Android App

While everyone seems to be waiting for their G+ activation and/or iOS app, I just like to point out that the current Android App for Google+ is in all aspects superior to the Facebook app on Android (and on iOS).
  • Faster
  • Syncs with all other google services (check this in Settings -> Accounts & Sync -> Google)
  • Faster
  • Not sure if the Huddle (group texting) service is really a plus... haven't used it so far
  • Faster
  • The photo/video auto upload feature is great:
    privacy is OK, because your pictures will only go to a private folder in Picasa and they are almost instantaneously available in G+ to share
  • Faster
  • Images/Photos actually are shown/loaded, whereas in the FB app they fail to load at all in about 1/3 of the times I click on one (Wifi or 3G/HSDPA connection)
So all in all: big + for the G+ app.

Monday, July 04, 2011

Android Gallery Problem

Every Android phone I've seen so far has a problem that all of a sudden recent photos are missing from the Gallery.
Most users then think the picture they just took has not been saved to the phone or sd-card.

Wrong.

This is - as a simple google search will reveal - a problem of the media scanner.
The standard Gallery app relies on the MediaScanner to collect images from the various folders of the SD card. And apps should notify the MediaScanner when they store a new image/video/... on the SD card.

However, something is broken in the media scanner and it seems to die frequently - or at least not work.

Easiest work around (apart from rebooting the device):

Go to Settings and unmount and re-mount the SD-card.
This will force the media to be re-scanned.
However, this is a bad idea to do when you are listening to podcasts at the same time (because they are on the SD-card as well, which you are about to unmount...)

Therefore - even better, download an app like "Rescan Media" from the market place. All it does, is re-invoke the Media Scanner.
Just click on it - voila, the images will be back again.

Saturday, July 02, 2011

iPad - the missing key

If you want to edit HTML on the iPad, you quite frequently have to switch to the special character keyboard.
Conveniently it contains all the keys/characters you need to e.g. type in a those nasty HTML tags.

Almost.
The forward-slash (/) key is actually missing.

Oddly enough, there would be enough room for it, see my rendering of this

(The place where I put the key is actually empty).

Mid-Year Resolution

I haven't been working on my Mid-May Resolution:
"I'll get a second (CPU) core in my home PC before I get it in my smart phone."
Granted, I neither have a dual/multi-core CPU in my PC *nor* in my smart phone right now...

but I should be working on the PC issue. Especially the Android Emulator could need it.

Google+

I've been using Google+ now for a couple of days, and I have to admit I like it.
Currently it suffers from being almost 100% self-referential... everyone on G+ only talks about G+.
Apart from that it reminds me a lot of friendfeed. (Odd, since FF was bought by Facebook - of all).

I wonder why they did not implement hash-tags (like twitter). They'd link individual posts to topics, so they provide additional (and in many cases) valuable information - or meta information.

G+'s most important task is to get additional signals to improve Google search/index, so hash-tags should serve well there. Wouldn't they?

Or does Google consider hash-tags as "messing with the algorithm" because they are being entered by humans... and not derived from their algorithms?