Anas Ismail Khan

I was browsing through dribbble (I dont really do that very often), when I came across this. Since the animation wasn’t really running well, I moved on to reading the description (response by the designer himself to be precise), at the bottom of which was a link to the _“full-video.” _I followed, but after watching only part of it, I again moved on to the description, and followed the link therin, and that’s when i fully understood what it all was about.

Clink is actually an app, that allows you to have _drinks _together, while not being together at all. Here’s an example, it’s your birthday, and you want to treat your friends to a drink. You’d open the app and send a _clink _to some bar (bars have to create clink accounts), that acts as a token, carrying details of whatever drink you are offering your friend, and of course you have to pay right-then too, using PayPal.

Though I myself might never use it, I do really appreciate the developers for their effort. The idea or concept behind the project isn’t bad either, and especially, nowadays when the birthday-guy has to treat the wishers (or they’d force him into doing so; no escape), this might come in handy..

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” — George Bernard Shaw

GNU’s not Unix!

Title says it all, and here they are:

1. Lightning Launcher: First things first. Not many android users, especially those dealing with the older versions of HTC sense are content with the default UI. Common replacements are the GO Launcher, and Apex. But the thing with these two is that they can take up a nice amount of memory, especially GO launcher. On phones with high-specs, this may go un-noticed, but even on Dual-cores, the GO Launcher can cause a visible lag. To avoid this, for users that want naught but productivity, Lightning Launcher is a great option. It’s damn light, (at times it may take not more than just 2MB!) It’s extremely simple yet very customizeable, and once you get the hang of it, you can adjust it exactly to suit your requirements, but on the minus side, setting up, and getting used to it can be taxing and time consuming. In my opinion, lightning l_auncher is to android what lxde is to ubuntu. _For those who prefer a more user-friendly, and _slightly-less-bland, yet damn-light _UI, they can go for Smart Launcher.
2. Smart Launcher: In terms of weight, this ones my second favorite, and currently my primary launcher application. Smart Launcher is, in terms of design, a bit different. The home screen is more like a lock-screen sort of design, the top half of which can be dedicated to a widget (it features a clock by default), and the lower part can hold a virtually unlimited amount of icons dedicated to applications and shortcuts. Swiping from the edge, or pressing the menu button, or touching the menu icon, all would take you to the  App Drawer, where the apps are all sorted into categories (and you are free to move them from one categ. to another.)  That’s pretty much it. It’s pretty much customizeable too. You can alter the home-screen icons to a number of presets, and you can also apply themes and icon-packs.
3. Aptoide: Aptoide is a store-of-stores. Especially on Devices that don’t support the Play-Store, Aptiode comes real handy. It’s like a portal where people can create their own stores and upload applications, but that was the developer side. For general consumers, aptoide works great for searching for and installing applications not available on the playstore, or those that aren’t really free. Just try once, and you’d know. It has to be manually downloaded and installed. Available for Download at aptoide.com
4. Astro and ES File Explorer: Rivals, and since i never explored the former much, I cannot say which one’s better but in terms of personal preference, ES is. ES is user-friendly and simply packed with features. And has a clean user-friendly interface. You can use it to access files over FTP, Bluetooth, LAN, and of course you can add your SKydrive, U1, and other cloud accounts. Has an inbuilt App Manager, Download Manager and other usuals. However, the one thing it doesnt have and Astro does is a cool, proper Task Manager. It is however available as an independent app called the ES Task Manager, but I never liked it much. Astro also offers integration for your Facebook account, but it’s the interface of Astro which I just couldn’t get myself to like. Nevertheless I keep both.
5. Kingsoft Office: Documents to Go, and Office Suite Pro aren’t exactly free, and buying such stuff for mobile devices might not exactly be a very cost effective solution for users who don’t really need to use these apps much, and to be honest, i never ever used the full version of either. Kingsoft office offers a Writer, a presentation tool, and a spreadsheet, and that is pretty much all one might need on a mobile device. Not really low on formatting features either, so for a general user, Kingsoft Office won’t be a bad choice. It’s pretty user friendly too.
6. Inkpad Notepad: A simpler alternative to Evernote. Inkpad notepad is a plain notepad, which kinda resembles the iOS notes app in terms of design. All your notes are synced to inkpadnotepad.com. Free version only allows upto four syncs per day, and this could be irritating for some users, and especially when it keeps on notifying you with every sync. Still for a general user, not a bad choice, since Evernote can take some time getting used to.
7. Myscript Calculator: Is a fun, and useful application which allows you to write mathematical expressions as you would on paper, and solves them. Does support all the functions your default calculator app does, and only provides an easier way to interact and avoid confusion.
8. Clean Master and All-In-One-Toolbox: Both are great Optimizers. Clean Master offers an easy to use interface, while the latter might offer an extra tool or two. Both have a one-touch-memory-boost button, and both offer widgets for the home-screen. A bonus feature of Clean-master’s is that it adds a button to your default launchers homescreen after the first boost. Both offer junk, history and AppData cleaners, and App Managers. All-in-one-toolbox however offers a number of features that clean-master doesnt, like an inbuilt file-manager, Cache Cleaner, Apk managers, startup apps e.t.c.
9. PicsArt: The best photo-editor available for Android. Has everything one might need, but the feature that I really like is the Draw mode, which sort of is a mini version of PS running in your mobile complete with support for Layers.
10. Offline English Dictionary by Livio: The best Dictionary app available for Android. The definitions are from Wiktionary, but this one works offline.

First of, the ‘b’ stands for bit, _while the B stands for _byte. _So MB stands for _megabyte, _and Mb stands for _megabit. _The _Mi, Ki, Gi prefixes are binary prefixes. The  difference between Mb and Mibit is that MB represents 1000² bits, while Mibit represents 1024² bits. Same goes for Kb and Kibit.

So if it says 2MB, then its 2 * 1000² * 8 bits, and when it says 2Mb, then its 2 * 1000² bits.
When it’s 2Mibit, then it’s 2 * 1024² bits, and when it’s 2MiB it’s 2 * 1024² * 8 bits.

Try creating a new account via terminal on Ubuntu and see what it prompts you with…

“Enter new UNIX Password”

First off, simply fire up a terminal, and then for root access, type:

sudo su

It’d prompt you for the password, type it in.

Once you gain root access, type:

adduser username

It’d ask you to _enter new UNIX password. _type one, and retype when it asks you to

That’s it. Now it would prompt you for a few more details regarding the new user, but they arent important, just press enter, and soon, it’d  prompt you to confirm if the information is correct. Type y and enter. That’s it. Your new user account is up and running. To delete it via terminal, type the following command when root:

deluser username

Google, that started as a search engine that gained global popularity, and parallel to searching, the only thing it offered was a home page light-enough for you to test your internet connection, but that doesn’t at all mean that it wasn’t awesome enough them. A whole lot of people owe their success to it, as it helped numerous youngsters with their homework and school projects, and thus if they are successful now, Google might have contributed a whole lot into their success. According to it’s wiki article, Google started in 1998, but it has now come a long way from being just a search engine.

Then came other products. Gmail, in 2007 or 8, (and something by the name of Google Wave followed too , but it wasnt very successful,)  which soon became a _rival _to Hotmail and YMail. Well, OK, Hotmail isn’t the _primary thing _of Microsoft’s. MS was the first software company, it brought computers to the world to be consumed by normal people and we respect that. Who cares if Bing never got as popular as Google, MS isnt all about search engines either.  As for Yahoo, Okay, Google beat their search engine, but loyal ymail lovers still like it, and well their _messenger _is still respected more than Google’s talk.

Ah yes, Google Talk eh? Well, this one, a messenger would fall in the same category as Windows Live messenger and Yahoo’s messenger, however, once again, Not very successful. Earlier this year, It was renamed to Hangouts, and perhaps a few newer features were introduced, like using phone numbers to find friends e.t.c. The kind of thing Viber and WhatsApp are famous for, but still, consumers like me prefer sticking to the older, and _original _ones, i.e. the two mentioned above.

Then there’s the Google Drive. Cloud storage, and rival to Microsoft’s Skydrive. I like and respect both, and both have their pros and cons and in my opinion, both are _equal _on the whole, plus again, MS isn’t famous for being a provider of cloud storage. Google Docs, an online office productivity suite, the MS counterpart for which is the Office online. Both are great.

Then there’s Google+, a Social network by google, that perhaps isnt very popular as Facebook and twitter, yet the 3rd in terms of preferrence. This can be proved by the fact that most websites, for contact, or _upvotes/reccommendation _provide three buttons. One from Twitter, one from Facebook, and another from Google+. But still, not exactly on the top eh? Another is Picasa, which is a photosharing cloud-storage, and perhaps might be considered a rival to Yahoo’s Flickr. However, from what I know,Flickr is more popular.

Youtube, the primary place on the web to look for Videos too is owned by Google, though perhaps not started by them, but it’s improving a whole lot, and one cant say that Google didnt contribute to it.

AngularJS, a Javascript Library and framework, Google’s, and rivals a number of others that fall in the similar category and is certainly gaining popularity and quite some fan base in  the world of developers. The Google App engine provides free hosting for web apps, rather like Heroku. And that’s not all, The Google Apps are a set of productivity tools, for businesses and individuals, that help with setting up and managing websites. Then the Google Developer tools are good and the Google Analytics Tools help a lot with SEO, and keeping track of site traffic. Oh and Blogger is a great place for _normal(s) _to start a blog.

Google Maps, rival to iPhone’s maps, and the primary GPS service of most users nowadays, and it’s streetview is known to have captured some seriously interesting stuff. Google Earth is a similar product but it provides an interactive, fun interface where you can explore the earth. Similar products are Google Mars, Google Moon, and Google Sky.

But that’s not all, these products dont even contribute to perhaps half of Google’s fame. There’s more. In 2008, Google launched Android. A Linux based, free and open-source Operating system for Mobile devices, and the first ever android device to apppear in the market was the HTC Dream. Android gained popularity real quick, and especially with the release of the Galaxy Y and other Galaxy devices, it soon got _‘fan-ned’ _by a large percentage of the world, and became a rival to iOS. Android devices are manufactured by the leading company of the present, Samsung, Sony, and HTC, and of course, Google’s own Nexus devices, one of which is launched every year. Could Android kick iOS out of the market? maybe if they play well, as they are in a position to.

The same year, they’d lauched Google Chrome. The top web-browser of the present, that soon became another alternative to internet explorer alongside Mozilla’s Firefox. Well, Internet Explorer’s had it’s day, still respected.

As Chrome got popular and computing moved closer to the cloud, Google seized the chance and launched Chrome OS. Another Linux Based OS, damn lightweight, and this time for slightly more desktop devices. The idea behind Chrome OS was something like this. Every day, millions of users boot into their computers, and once it’s fully loaded, the double-click the icon of their web-browser and start off with whatever they want to do, but dont really do much outside the browser, so they are more or less logging into their OS just to be able to use the browser, so what if your browser was your OS?
Chrome OS’s source code is publicly available, however, it isnt available for download and comes preinstalled in Chromebooks, that are laptops officially built for the OS.

A few days back, Google announced the release of a Chrome Apps launcher for MacOSX. The Chrome Apps were originally a feature offered by the browser. More like extensions perhaps, but slightly more ‘applications’. They are also well integrated into the Chrome OS of course and are the main _software _for Chrome-OS. The thing about them is that they are totally on the web, they dont have to be installed. All you need is a _launcher, _which could be either the launcher itself, or the ChromeOS (which has a similar launcher of course) or the chrome web browser.
But they released the launchers for MacOSX and Windows? And I also read that apps are being made for Android and iOS too, however i couldnt find an Android app on the playStore… not yet.

So, as these launchers are out, a number of people might try these, and some, with high speed connections and normal use, might get too comfortable with their apps, that they are gonna try out when they try the launcher, and when they do, the apps would get popular and some users’ use might not extend beyond using these apps, and this is how some might consider switching to Chrome OS itself.. + chromebooks are real cheap and thus attract buyers.

Android is becoming like the primary OS for smartphones, and soon their might come a time, when, like I posted before, they might merge the two projects.
Merging would result in a whole lot of improvements in ChromeOS, and then people might actually start using it, if it has the integration _that i look forward to seeing, _and using.

Just look how Google is expanding. Started as a search engine and now its the leading company of the web, and with the passage of time, It’s trying on every field or bit there is to IT. Then that Google glass. They can actually monitor, and see exactly what you are doing using that thing. People use gmail as their primary email, Drive to store data, buy domains and hosting from google, walk with a pair of spec on their noses that too was developed by google and records what they see.

It’s like WE the CONSUMERS are being CONSUMED by technology, when it should be the other way round. If anything close to Skynet exists or ever will.. It’s Google.

A LinkedIn Article that I read. It’s a bit long but do read it…

Not really sure if the ‘phrase’ but you cant die is supposed to mean that you “shouldnt give up”, or that “despite how hard it might seem, entrepreneurship doesn’t ever kill you.”

This Wednesday Google launched a Mac version of the Chrome Apps launcher.