Huh. The tumblr app for Android has gotten really really good. I might actually start using Tumblr more often now.
this is the first sentence on this blog.
Hopefully I can cultivate and help this thing bloom
Thought I might procrastinate some more, got some room
In my head, to process all these thoughts in my mind
Things keep getting wyrd and wyrder, this is the daily grind
Of life.
My bad poetry aside, you’re looking at the first post on this blog.
Welcome/Bienvenido/
| 환영합니다 |
because it makes it sound like there’s more than one outcome.
Yeah, we’re expecting a baby
but it could be a velociraptor.
(Source: not-a-painbow)
Anonymous (via notwritenow)
(Source: papercrushed)
tags: Data. Don't be Evil. Google. Internet. Mobile. Net Neutrality. Smartphones. Verizon. Verizon Wireless.
Net Neutrality: a principle proposed for user access networks participating in the Internet that advocates no restrictions by Internet Service Providers and governments on content, sites, platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and no restrictions on the modes of communication allowed.
Some of you may have heard the term “net neutrality” going around for the past couple of weeks. This is because Google and Verizon were rumored to be negotiating a contract to give Google higher speeds on Verizon’s network at a cost to the consumer.
These rumors turned out to be false.
Instead, Google and Verizon put forth a 7-part proposal that would give consumers legal access to all parts of the internet and hand over regulatory power to the FCC.
This proposal would bar carriers from discriminating against content providers and accepting payment from said carriers for improved speeds. Violators would be then fined up to 2 million dollars as punishment.
Good, right? Seems like Google and Verizon are all for net neutrality, right?
There’s more to the proposal.
According to said document, all private Internet channels would be exempt from such restrictions. Mobile connections (smartphones, MP3 devices, etc.) would be exempt as well.
The internet market is quickly transitioning to the mobile market space with the advent of 4G cellular connections, which can rival broadband speeds. Wired is transitioning to wireless.
If the mobile internet is exempt from such restrictions, big companies like Google and Verizon would be free to hit up exclusivity deals that would deliver premium speeds for higher prices. It would be as if you, a consumer, had bought a smartphone and paid for a data plan on Verizon, but to get the fastest speeds available, you would have to pay extra fees on top of your main data plan to get the faster connections.
Sure, the proposal hasn’t actually been made law yet, but if Google and Verizon have already made moves, what’s stopping companies like Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, AT&T, Sprint, and others from making the same kind of exclusivity deals? It would make the market extremely confusing and convoluted, and the consumer would have to pay far more than they should have to.
This is a big blow to the net neutrality movement, as Google had been one of the movement’s most ardent supporters.
What does this mean for you, the consumer? It will mean that you will have to start paying more for faster connections on your smartphones and data plans. Be prepared for more of the same.
It goes to show that corporations are still corporations, however consumer-friendly they may pretend to be.
So much ado has been made (so much, even, that “you’re holding it wrong” is a predicted search term on Google) about the iPhone 4’s woes with it’s antenna (which might feel a little bullied by now), and how holding it with the so-called “death grip” (holding it tightly so finger contact is made with the lower left groove of the phone) makes you lose a bunch of signal (like 24 dB).
Well, I did a very unscientific, amateur test with my own phone, the Palm Pre Plus, and I can assure you, the “death grip” works with it too! But not in the same exact fashion.
As is obvious (well, this is a picture of the first Pre, but CDMA is CDMA), the antenna on the Pre stretches around the back of the phone. So I took the cover off, and then made contact with the antenna with my fingers, holding it extremely tight (more than I ever would normally), and then put my other hand to cover the bottom portion of the antenna. And guess what? My phone dropped about 3 bars in a 5 bar coverage area! So yes, this ‘issue’ can be replicated with other phones.
However, although reception performance on the iPhone 4 is significantly improved over previous renditions, it seems to me Apple made it more susceptible than other phones to the “death grip.” Sure, the trade-off is that you get improved reception, and Apple is now giving away free bumpers (and fixed their stupid signal bar formula), but shouldn’t people be aware of this? I mean, more aware of it than they are now? It seems to me Apple hasn’t been exactly ‘honest’ to the public about the objective benefits and deficiencies of this kind of antenna scheme, and merely tried to cover the issues up with a proclaimed “<1 dropped calls out of 100” and demand the “benefit of the doubt” without having really earned it.
So, what’s the point? Yes, I can replicate the signal dropping “death grip” on other phones, but it isn’t as easy to lose as much signal as the iPhone 4 does.
Well, the logo change actually happened a while ago, but in case you hadn’t noticed yet:
Firefox 4.0, Beta 1 was released earlier this week, and has been available to the public, if any of you are interested.
What’s new?
Well …
For one, 4.0 now has a reworked UI dubbed “Strata” that looks a lot better than the default UI from it’s 3.x days.
From the blog:
- New Add-Ons Manager: gives you more space to manage your Add-Ons, Themes and Plugins. Customizing your browser has never been easier!
- HD Video: Watch hardware-accelerated, super-smooth, HD-quality HTML5 video on YouTube using the new WebM format.
- Privacy improvements: Mozilla always puts privacy first, and this latest beta fixes flaws in some Web standards that could expose your browser history.
- Crash Protection: Experience uninterrupted browsing (now available on all platforms) – when a plugin crashes or freezes, you can resume browsing by simply refreshing the page.
- Performance: We know that performance is important. In this version, we focused on improving responsiveness at start-up and during page loads. This is just the beginning for performance improvements in Firefox 4.
And the performance is indeed better: a markedly improved response than from 3.7 or 3.6. However, the Mozilla team hasn’t added the new Javascript engine they’re working on just yet, and when they do, expect another post on if it affects anything.
The speed differences between Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari on my computer are negligible at worst, but most likely, your experiences will be much different.
For the record, though, I’m running 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate with a 3.2 Ghz AMD Athlon x64, so browser efficiency no longe really matters on my end. Undoubtedly, Chrome, Safari, or Opera will run differently on other systems.
tags: Apple. Apple iPhone 4. Battery. Battery Life. Battery Saving. HTC. HTC EVO 4G. Limits. Palm. Palm Pre Plus. Rush to Idle. Smart Management.
So I’m here to tell you all about one of the most overlooked features of a mobile device, and one of the most important: battery life.
I mean, what’s the point of being able to access 4G cellular waves, use a 960x640 “retina” display, or spread an internet connection among different devices if the device is going to die 2 hours after leaving the juice?
That’s right. There is no point! Which is why battery life is so important (and why people make a big stink about not being able to swap out batteries). It’s why reviews almost always have a section devoted to battery life and how many hours a regular user will eke out of a mobile battery. It’s why battery drain tests are standard. Because it’s so crucial to how a mobile device (be it a smartphone, dumbphone, or regular laptop) works.
But of course, battery life isn’t a standard number, per se; it is variable and changes from day to day, from person to person. We buy these devices and try to manage this precious number by not doing what the device was meant to do in the first place. So I have a few tips for those of you who don’t know how to manage your battery life most efficiently.
The first and foremost principle of saving power is a little something called “rush-to-idle.” This theory is based on the premise that all technology has a goal: to get back to an idle state as fast as possible. It goes without saying, but all devices use the least power while idling (if a device doesn’t, there’s something very wrong). This is why faster processors are always good things; they shorten the time back to an idle state, saving battery life. It’s why people try to overclock their Palm Pre or Motorola Droid; overclocking decreases the amount of time spent in an active state, theoretically saving more power. Simple, right?
Not exactly.
With laptops, this gets a bit complicated. Often with a laptop, one is running numerous background tasks at the same time, taking up processor cycles, sometimes to the point that idle-time almost takes as much power as active-time. This is why it’s rare to see a laptop achieve even more than 5 hours of battery time, like the MacBook Pro, and more common to see users stick huge batteries to their laptops.
Smartphones are just as complicated as well: Windows Mobile put smartphone multitasking on the map, with the double whammy on performance and battery life. webOS tries to limit these as much as it possibly can (by providing an extremely light UI), but there are still noticeable effects on performance and battery life when too many background tasks come into the equation. Android tries to remedy the performance/battery life hits by limiting the amount of running applications in the background, but due to some irresponsible coding, background tasks still take up a ton of cycles on many Android devices, forcing many users to download and use an actual task manager.
iOS 4 tries to implement a more limited form of Android multitasking, by limiting the amount of applications that can run in the background, but also limiting the kinds of applications that can take advantage of this. iOS also automatically save states every application that is closed (much like webOS).
So how does one go about the battery life dilemma? Well, I know this is obvious, but the less you use a device, the more power it saves. That’s right; checking Twitter every minute and getting push e-mail from a non-push e-mail service won’t win you favors with your phone. Rendering long videos or browsing impulsively for hours won’t make your laptop feel better either. So that means that inherent limits exist when one is using a mobile device that isn’t tethered to an outlet.
“But great,” you might say, “What’s the point of having these marvelous devices if we have to limit their incredible capabilities?”
In some cases, you might be right. But having certain limits doesn’t mean said marvelous device can’t do some of these incredible things. Being smart about power consumption and managing connections helps out a device a lot. If one is using a push e-mail service like Gmail, set the e-mail checking to “as they arrive” or some other variant. Check Twitter every 30 minutes instead of every 5. Browse only the news that matters to you and don’t go on link escapades. One can still be connected, but being connected constantly only uses up precious energy.
For certain laptops and other devices with removable batteries, replacements can be bought: when the first battery dies, swap in the second one, and you’re good to go. Of course, with devices that don’t possess this kind of convenience, users will have to manage with slightly more limits.
Saving battery life and extending it requires a bit of restraint on the part of the user, and this can be hard. Really hard. If it’s too hard, buying extra batteries can help, but that adds the extra worry about determining which batteries are charged and which are not. It also adds more baggage to carry. It’s a precarious balancing act, battery life. Save too much, and you might find yourself underwhelmed and less connected that you might want. Use too much, and you’ll find yourself regretting playing too much Doodle Jump when you miss a call from your significant other.
Note: Be thankful that we have Li-Ion batteries, and not NiCad. NiCad’s were horrible. And unlike NiCad’s, you DON’T want to make a habit of draining Li-Ion batteries. If you do, there is a slight chance (enough to matter) that the battery might lose all capacity to hold a charge at all, which is why you should top off the charge when you have the chance.
So, the HP + Palm buyout just finalized this morning, and Palm is now an official subsidiary of HP.
What’s so cheery about this announcement though, is that it seems that, for all intents and purposes, Palm is still Palm, and webOS is still webOS, which is great!
Palm webOS devices are now popping up on HP’s Wireless Central site, and recent announcements from higher-ups in HP lead me to believe that new devices are on the way, folks (for those of you that care, obviously).
So, to reopen this line of debate, what happens with Palm and it’s brainchild, webOS? Well, the constant problem of the past decade or so was that Palm was really running out of money (they were predicted to become bankrupt at least 3 times), so while they may have had some really good ideas (webOS, cough cough) they weren’t properly able to realize their true vision, being forced to launch the Pre on Sprint, and coming very late in the game to Verizon and AT&T.
Palm has also lost quite a few important people, including Matias Duarte, the primary force behind webOS’s user interface, to companies like Google and Apple. Palm fans can sigh in relief though, because John Rubenstein is still CEO at Palm.
I hope to see a ton of new, cool devices come out of this joint venture, and perhaps the presumably dead HP Slate will be replaced by a webOS HP Slate. We’ll never know until they announce. WebOS 2.0, you’re on the horizon! :D (or at the very least, 1.4.5, which was released on Germany’s O2 a couple of days ago).
In other news …
The Palm Pre has now hit the 1GHz barrier (previously, 1GHz was not used because of performance bottlenecks), and the “bleeding edge” replacement kernel is dubbed the F105 Thunderchief. It’s hard-coded to follow the screenstate governor (which changes speeds based on whether the screen is on or not), going back to 500 MHz when the screen is off, and 1GHz when the screen is active. The kernel also goes back to 500 MHz when charging.
My take? The kernel is pretty stable so far (which is surprising, considering this is an alpha release), and while it may not bring faster app loading times, it brings a certain level of smoothness to the UI that I did not witness when I was using the 800 MHz speeds. Unixpsycho, the man who created this wonder (and many others), is apparently working on undervolting the kernel (which involves lowering the voltage used by the processor, so it takes less electricity and heat, and becomes more efficient as a result).
Palm seems to be focusing on promoting app development more than ever now, as they’ve waived the $50 application submission fee, and have refunded the $50 paid from initial developers. Hot Apps, a program launched by Palm to encourage development, was a great thing when it was for the normal SDK apps. Palm is now planning to launch the PDK Hot Apps program in a few weeks (Hot Apps is a program where the most popular app wins a lot of money to contribute towards further development). The $99 fee for a full developer account has also been waived. Hooray! Now go out there and start making stuff! (Note: All the apps in the App Catalog are STILL half-priced, so those of you with webOS devices, go and buy ‘em! When the apps are sold, Palm gives money to the devs as if the apps were still full-price too!)
