HP Chromebook-14

HP Chromebook-14

I recently went to the Google office for a design sprint session. During the session I got to use Chromebooks. 

At first I was extremely excited but after getting my hands on it my excitement died.
The Chromebook looks exactly like a mac book without the apple logo.
They keep their promise of running fast! It took less than 5 seconds for it to start and the same for shutting down. All you have to do is push the power button.
So far it works only on apps and the internet. If people like working with just the internet then this might be your thing but for others you may not be so excited to use this. But I didn't really have time to try and download development tools and see if those works so I cant give more inputs on that. The build looks pretty solid and it is indeed lightweight. If you don't like windows laptops and can't afford a macbook then this laptop is definitely for you. For the rest I think it's best to wait and see what the next versions have to offer.

For now here's what it looks like. The desktop(screen) is empty and you have to chose from the app section. The Chromebook runs on an Intel Celeron chip. It has a 14" display which is great for watching videos and movies. On the right side of the laptop (as you can see in the pictures) there is a usb slot along with a sd card slot and the power port. on the left you have an HDMI port, audio input/output slot and 2 more usb slots. What I loved was that it comes with 100 GB Google Drive Cloud Storage with 16GB Solid State Drive. It's a great use of google's cloud storage and I love using cloud than using up actual memory!

Youtube's new material design

YouTube has launched it's latest update with a brand new material design and an option of viewing offline.

People are going gaga over the latest updates that Google has to offer in Android. Recently the new YouTube update grabbed people's attention. The latest design comes with a bright red header with the options of Home and Music on it. As usual the home page shows all the recommended videos and the music bar is a new feature that YouTube had introduced with some customized playlists of songs.

 

On the left topmost corner, a list button opens a sidebar of all the options like subscriptions uploads etc, similar to what we had earlier but looks far sleeker than it previously did.

We also had a floating video tab that would be seen on the bottom right of the screen. This was great as you could keep an eye on your video while you searched for other videos in your list.

YouTube now offers an offline option. If you look under the video you'll see a small download option. On pressing that you can save your videos for later and access it even when you're in a no WiFi zone.
This is not a great addition yet. Many videos have disabled this option and thus it is applicable on only select videos. You might still have to use a YouTube downloaders if you want to download other videos.

ZEN u105 Fire Ultrafone Firefox OS Mobile review

ZEN U105 FIREFOX OS

Specs:

Display

3.50-inch

Processor

1GHz

Front Camera

 0.3-megapixel

Resolution

 320x480 pixels

OS

 Firefox OS

Storage

256MB

Rear Camera

2-megapixel

Battery capacity

1200mAh

 My Verdict: 

The Zen U105 Fire has been launched in the market at a selling price of Rs.2299 and currently retailing on hopeshop18 Rs. 1,999.The objective of the phone is to give a smartphone experience to users who have never owned a smartphone. If one looks at it with that in mind it might be a huge win due to it's lightweight and sleek design. They offer the phone with a touch screen which is an added feature to this low cost phone. The quality of the touch screen is great and the swipe is easy to manage.

The disadvantage is the OS. Despite it being the key feature, the operating system still isn't a winner when it comes to the UX. The interface is easy to manage but when a user wants to download a few apps to make his experience better the user will be thoroughly disappointed. Even though this isn't really Firefox's fault and is the fault of the creators of the app, when one wants to buy an phone for entertainment and not just looks this phone looses out on points.

Firefox OS is a mobile operating system based on Linux and Mozilla’s Gecko technology. It is built up on open web standards like HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Every app in Firefox OS including the Camera and the Dialer is a web app, i.e. a website in the form of an app.

Even though the camera was a mere 2MP it wasn't disappointing when I tried clicking pictures in well lit areas. The front camera was redundant because of it's poor quality. Videos are very patchy and blurry to view.

The quality of the speakers are great. Probably the best feature of the phone are it's speakers!

In this price range one does get a few Android rip-offs and when it comes to the UX of Android, Firefox does have to bow down to it. The rip offs might not be as good quality in terms of UI but in terms of UX the phones will make the customers far more satisfied than the Zen phone.

With everything in mind I will rate this phone as a 2.5 out of 5.

Firefox OS intensive workshop

Day 1 of the intensive app making session was a fun day. Well at least for me! Being a college student freebies are to die for and when Firefox hands you a a whole new phone to work with you can imagine the amount of joy I was feeling!
All of us simultaneously unboxed our fancy gadgets. Well don't our expressions give away how excited we were? OK! I don't know about the rest but I sure was happy. A new gadget to fiddle with! (check out the video!)

The day started with a keynote from Dietrich. He was the heart of the workshop! I like people better when they don't laugh at me for not knowing something. He and the Firefox reps were the kindest! :D

The workshop was to build Firefox OS apps and to tell us how they plan on making a low budget- easy to understand smartphones for the first time smartphone users. After being briefed about everything we started coding. Firefox apps are mostly coded like a website. We use a Firefox developer package and that's where we have WebIDE, the application we work on. Quite similar to, say, Eclipse for Android.
We were making a photo uploader/sharing app. Dietrich and the reps believed in letting us code on our own in order to learn better, but some of us weren't good with JavaScript and they had to give us sample codes. The overall event was very well planned and organized.
The food was disappointing. Considering that most of the participants were boys(19:1), with a rather large appetite I thought the number of pizzas ordered were less. Though the venue was a lot like a bachelor pad so I can't really complain either! Can I?
By the end of the day all of us had a well functioning button for clicking pictures, accessing the camera/gallery, listing pictures and storing them. More importantly, we learnt about the success and error handlers and how to use them with the concept of the app

Day 2 involved more of coding and we weren't too bothered about breaks. We learnt a few complex concepts next . Like setting permissions, selecting the picture, deleting, sharing and uploading them on imgur. Post this was the How-Tos of getting the app on the marketplace. What to focus on when marketing or designing an app or what new features can be included for making a first time smart phone users' experience better.
The session HAD to end with a intensive photo clicking sessions. Well Dietrich took the pics with him! maybe I'll put them up when I get them.
Till then here's a picture of all the boxes of pizza that was munched on the 2 days of the event! :D

GDG DEVFEST Bangalore 2014

GDG DEVFEST 2014

GDG Bangalore held this year's Devfest at the Royal Orchid hotel on the 8th of November. It was an invite only event and had 200 attendees.

They had a total of 6 main sessions and the flash talks had 5 speakers. The event started with a keynote by Amrit Sanjeev, Program manager at Google. He started with the Google communities and what Google has to offer. Along with that he took a quick session on what should developers do and remember in order to have the perfect product. He covered the areas of code quality, thinking long term, making money, art of selling, availability and most important paying attention to the developer agreement.

Shortly after was a tea break followed by the next session. This session was handled by Dushyant, GDG member. He talked about problem solving and focused on 4 main points in Polymer web components

namely, custom element, templates, shadow DOM and HTML imports. He showed a demo on polymer-project.org and mentioned products that we can engage in like polymer-project and hackademic.

Next was Material Design by Soham Mondol,Triveous and member of GDG blrdroid. He talked about the different design options that can be used in Android lollipop. He focused on all the new features and also described how to use the best layouts and options for one's design. He talked about the left to right placement, different types of buttons and arrangements, cards, floating action buttons and many more topics that have now been introduced in android L. His animated video's made it easy for the members to get a hang of what the designs are.

 After lunch Shreyas and Surabhi took over the stage and talked about choosing the right database. Database Management and using database is one of the most essential factors in one's application.

Next session was a longer session. It was handled by Mr Satish VJ. He talked about Angular JS. He coded a few JS codes along with the audience and talked about the various places where this is beneficial and how it's used. He was one of the speakers that hung with us gsa's while we were working. He has a unique way of selling himself. Being a photographer, he uses the pictures he's clicked  for his visiting cards. These cards are bite-sized and are very cute to look at.

Senthil Kumar took over and talked about IoT. The next big thing in tech. Internet of Things has kept techies intrigued and this was a session that every attendee looked forward to. His session was interactive and entertaining. He used a lot of animated videos and gave a small overview of what IoT is and what the hype is about. Augmented reality and animations are turning out to be the future of tech and this session was the best way to understand why.

At the end of it there were 5 speakers who signed up to talk about their start-ups and/or topics they find intriguing. At this point of time we GSAs and GDG members were busy organizing swags for the attendees and couldn't attend the whole session though I did get to attend a session by a college student named Srinidhi. The eventful day ended with each attendee getting his/her Google developer tee and many group photos. Here's a picture of me and the other GSAs and GDG memebrs.