Music to my ears ~

Enter this in the Mac terminal.app:

say -v cello d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d droid

D R O I D

I’m running Chrome 14.0.835.35 beta. The full release notes on the Chrome Releases blog mentions Additional Mac OS X Lion feature support.

Two-finger swiping for going back and forward works although without the page-behind animation that Safari offers. I liked that, so you could decide if you wanted to actually go back, or if you wanted a peak and could cancel halfway in.

The other new addition is the fullscreen support in Lion. In the top right corner, there is a fullscreen button just like there is in Safari. Like Safari in fullscreen, the Menubar hides when the mouse isn’t near the top of the screen. However, there is an extra button, it looks more like an up-arrow than the opposed arrow Apple uses for going into fullscreen, that will allow the Address bar and bookmarks bar to automatically hide like it did with previous builds.

The remaining feature that is not yet in Chrome is double tapping to zoom. It might seem out to want that as a feature, but I’ve come to love it as I often used to make the text bigger even on my desktop, but on the laptop, it’s so effortless to make the screen bigger and it’s so easy to read.

At least we’re out of canary!

Update:
After more testing, while double tapping to zoom doesn’t work, using two fingers and dragging away from the center will do something. It’s not pretty. It’ll clumsily make the font bigger, or in reverse of course, it will make it smaller. Sadly, the Safari version of zooming is much better.

Happy browsing.

The Gmail Gadget of old is getting updated over the next few weeks. Cleverly, the plan is to only cater initially (or forever) to Webkit browsers, you know, like Safari or Chrome (but mostly just Chrome, if possible). Really, anyone using Chrome shouldn’t be using iGoogle now, they should have their homepage set to the speed dial. Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera are left out of the update, probably due to fancy CSS3 transitions that work.

Adobe Reader (v10.0.2)
Audible (v1.2.2.5 Market)
Battery Widget (v1.6.7)
Data counter widget (v1.5.5)
Docs (v1.0.10)
Facebook (v1.6.1)
Goggles (v1.5.2)
Google Reader (v0.9.3)
Google Voice (v0.4.2.32)

Google+ (v1.0.2)
HotSpot Toggle (v1.61)
Hotspot Widget (v1.2)
JuiceDefender (v3.5.6)
LastPass (v1.74.2)
LauncherPro (v0.8.6)
Listen (v1.1.4)
MyAppsList (v1.6)
Pandora (v1.5.10)
Retro Clock (v1.6.3)
ServeStream (v0.2.11)
Speed Test (v2.0.3)
Twitter (v2.1.0)
Wifi Analyzer (v2.5.9)

I suppose a couple of notes are in order.

At school, I frequently have to read PDF notices at a glance, so having Adobe Reader despite how atrocious it is can be incredibly useful. Audible is the greatest thing since the iPod since I’m not always in the position to hold a physical book or a kindle. The battery, data usage, hotspot and clock widgets are more like toys – are they apps? No, but did I install them? Yes. I find the battery icon on the notification bar worthless as it tends to visually over-estimate the remaining battery life. The data usage widget is something that should be built into Android and it is a mystery as to why it is not. One day I wanted to tinker with the secret hidden hotspot feature on this phone – I surprised and please to say, it works. The clock was worthless.

I store some documents in Google Docs like my dad’s working schedule, as a spreadsheet. It’s nice to have at-a-glance functionality without having to actually know my Google Account password. Goggles is just a fun app to play with, there is no real use. Facebook is Facebook, Twitter is Twitter, Google+ is Google+, no story there. I like using Google Voice occasionally but since I’ve left the iPod world behind, it’s become pretty infrequent. JuiceDefender was an app I was trying will in school in order to stretch my battery life – personally, I don’t know how much of a difference it made, I always had 50% when I got back home.

LastPass is awesome on a computer but cumbersome on a phone. LauncherPro adds fancy shortcuts and smooth transitions to an otherwise bland but good enough launcher UI. Listen is my podcast app of choice; free, via Google and complete integration with Google Reader subscriptions. Oh, Google Reader, well, I’ve got to keep on the latest tech-news, after all. Pandora is good to listen to some music but I don’t do that so much anymore. ServeStream is an awesome app that allows me to listen to streaming MP3s, like TWiT.tv. SpeedTest and Wifi Analyzer are tools – I have a funky Wireless setup at my house and it’s certainly handy to have tools.

So, there are the apps I use on my phone. I’ll be upgrading soon.

Happy apping!

But instead, I needed to get a list of apps on my Android phone. I make a list of applications on Windows before every re-install and Android is not really an exception. I looked into the market for an app to do this and there it was.

Downloadable in the Android Market, MyAppsList allows you to easily export a list of applications you have either downloaded via barcodes/qrcodes or via the market. This little app can save it as HTML with clickable links to the respective pages in the market. You can then save that generated list for safe keeping via email.

MyAppsList allows you to quickly generate a list of all the applications you have installed on your device and save it to the clipboard, save it to the SD Card or email it to a friend.
It supports vB Code (to post to forums), HTML and plain text.
MyAppsList is also a useful tool to create a list of installed applications as a personal backup.

Apparently I run my phone with 23 installed apps and I now have them safely remembered in an email somewhere. So if you ever need to swap or restore your phone, by keeping a periodically updated app-list will certainly ease the transition.

Happy listing!

A New Account Settings Panel for Google Plus

On the bottom of the page, it says:

Looking for older account options? Visit the previous version of the Google accounts screen »

That links you back to the old confusing service-centric layout.

The Old Account Settings Panel - Not Quite Easy for Normal People

Normal people don’t need to see all that extra-stuff. They just want the basics – like every other website, a single simple place to change passwords and set email address. At the same time, as time goes on and Google expands on the list on the sidebar to contain settings for other services, it’ll probably end up looking somewhat similar, albeit less spaced out.

My posts wall on Google+

I am located at my profile full of numbers. I did have the Google Profile URL ryan.rampersad but I’m not using that account at this time. Maybe in the future.

I’ll save my reviews for a while – I want to get to more people I know using this and actually experience this as an immersed user. So apparently, I’ll be getting ready for an onslaught of Google oriented posts all week because this all I’ll be doing.

Happy plusing

Since those profiles are becoming public soon and Google+ is just around the corner after that, what am I to do? My childhood account is my main account but do I want people to see me as daybreakmaster all over the place?

Hey… what’s your email? I’ll add you on Google+.
Oh… it’s daybreakmaster..
You’re lame, gawd.

See, just like that?

The services linked to my main Google Account

I have a lot of services connected to my main account. I can’t stop using this account after all this time; Analytics, Reader, Groups, and of course Gmail are all linked into this account.

On the other hand, my other account, the front-facing account that should be public, well, it looks a whole lot better.

My public Google Profile

Retrofitting that account would be annoying and probably would even work.

What I’m asking is this: would anyone giggle profusely if I used my main account from six years ago, daybreakmaster, on I used Google+, instead of ryan.rampersad?

Decisions, decisions. Any ideas?

But, Google is rebranding Blogger and Picasa. It’s one of those things they weren’t allowed to talk about.

Finally, I love that music and kinetic typography is my favorite.

So my first news of this was in a tweet from David Walsh:

I swear, Google’s new design is my new p0rn. Like a good-looking Amish girl; sexy and hot.

And I replied:

@davidwalshblog Reminds me of that Windows 8 video. Boxes, boxes everywhere!

I think that sums my thoughts up nicely. It looks very much like that Windows 8 preview-video. It’s the future! Boxes, boxes everywhere! Soft, rounded corners? “Whatchu talkin’ ’bout foo?” It’s the future.

Okay, enough joking around. Time for some heavy duty impressions.

Real, Honest, Impressions

The regular non-dense view is a joke. Things are just too spaced out and the amount of scrolling to even just watch a half-full Priority Inbox is atrocious. The margins and paddings are huge. Maybe that’s fine for a huge monitor, but the last time I checked, Gmail was going to be used and displayed on tiny Chromebook monitors. Oh wait…

Gmail - Regular Preview (non-dense)

After switching to the dense preview theme, things got a little better, but it’s still a little bloated in my opinion. I still have to scroll to see the everything else section in the Priority Inbox despite only having four important and unread emails and a single starred-but-read email. That’s not at-a-glance-friendly.

Dense Preview Theme

Starting with the sidebar. The huge compose mail button is great. The margins though between the items on the sidebar is too great though even in dense-view. It feels like the sidebar has a thinner width than in the classic theme, which should help, but then the space is eaten by the useless left-side margin anyway.

The actionable-buttons along the top, like Archive, Spam, & Delete are now floating and annoying. That might be useful, but it’s still annoying because again, it obstructs my view. But the design is nice – wide and thick buttons that are easy to press. The new refresh-button is welcome. I wonder when someone will figure out how to make Archive, Spam, & Delete and the others into icons so that words won’t be necessary in the action-bar.

The email-lines, the check-box, star, sender, and subject lines. Those, despite dense-view, are still to thick. It’s not dense enough. The colors are fine, it’s easy to tell what has and has not been read, at least if you’re coming from the old Gmail.

The inbox-ad used to be only on top. Now it floats with you. Annoying you. Annoying me. Annoying humanity. Ads should not move. They sit and wait to be called upon. And nothing more. I am serious about this. If they do not make it stationary, I will remove it myself.

Conversation view is about the same. The expand/contract, print all and pop-out buttons that used to be text-links are now icons. That’s good, but even I had to hover over the expand/contract one to realize it was what it was. That annoying bar continues to float around and the ad-bar does too. The agony.

Conversation View - Floating bars everywhere!

I think that’s about it. It is what it is. It’s just a theme and I suspect they’ll eternally offer the classic themes as well. But before I close, let me just interject on point about making a modern but flexible theme for Gmail. It must still function at narrow widths. It must.

683px Window Width - Preview Theme Discombobulates

What am I talking about? I often split my screen in Windows with snap and that will split my thin monitor resolution on my laptop from 1366 for one full window to two windows at about 683 pixels across for each. There is no reason there is a 30 pixel margin on the left side when this happens, there is no reason the action-bar does not properly wrap around, there is no reason for horizontal scrolling.

Conclusion

In their blog post, the Gmail team admits they will be refining their initial work for the foreseeable future. Google is trying to re-image itself and this is a step to do that. It’s a hard thing to do right and they have to get it right as millions use Gmail and only a handful know how to change themes. So, honestly, it was a good first attempt but there is still work to be done.

Impressions complete.