Galaxy Note 10.1 VS the new iPad [iPad 3]
Are you thinking of getting a new tablet & you are stuck between the two devices?
I personally haven't bought any tablet since the first iPad, Simply because I have been watching the tablets evolve for the past 3-4 years & non of them were able to get me convinced to replace the first iPad.
But this is different, I am referring to the new Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, this is the door to the future, an advanced tablet with real Multi-Tasking power. ( watch the video above & you'll know what I am talking about)
Below is a comparison table between ( Samsung Galaxy Note10.1 V.S the new iPad [iPad3]):
[avia_table]
| Galaxy Note 10.1 | new iPad | |
| Display | 10.1"WXGA | 9.7" Retina |
| Processor | 1.4GHz Quad-Core | 1GHz Dual-Core (A5X) |
| Memory | 2GB RAM | 1GB RAM |
| microSD Support | Yes | No |
| Front Camera | 1.9MP (720p HD Recording) | VGA |
| Back Camera | 5MP w/LED Flash 720p HD Recording | 5MP AF 1080 Full HD Recording |
| Additional Features | TouchWiz, Hubs, AllShare Cast, WiFi Ch. Bonding, Dropbox, Smart Stay | Voice Dictation /iMovie/ iPhoto |
| Digital Pen Writing | S Pen Embedded Adobe Photoshop Touch | [table_icon minus] |
| Multi Screen | Yes | No |
[/avia_table]
[quote style="boxed" ]I'd give credit to the new iPad for its 1080 Full HD recording & the Retina display but the rest would go for the favour of Samsung Galaxy note 10.1[/quote]
How Adobe Digital Editions ruined my digital reading experience
I'll be honest with you, I am not a fan of reading books digitally, to me it doesn't replace reading real books with real paper that has its own scent with each page flip.
Yet I have formed this habit of buying digital books that "might" be interesting rather than wasting a space on my shelf, if it turns out to be an awesome book I will continue reading it on my iPad, Nexus, or Even my MAC since its just a PDF file which I can carry with me everywhere... A very simple user experience, unbelievably effective, I can even bookmark pages with iBook.
To cut the story short, I was interested in one of the books provided by Wiley but i wasn't sure if the book was good enough to get a printed version so I decided to get the digital edition, checked out and downloaded the file.
At the beginning I thought "what the heck is this file (I sort of expected a PDF)" instead I got an ACSM file, I went back to the email they've sent, I tried looking for instructions, I've even downloaded the file again to see if I missed any useful instructions on how to read the damn book, turned out I needed something called Adobe Digital Editions (thank you Google & this forum post) which I have installed & i am gonna tell you why I hate this experience:
- Its not a PDF
- I had to install an application
- I had to register to be able to use the application ( I had problems getting registered )
- I had to import the file & download the ebook
- The viewport was awful & alot of content to read in a single slide, 3 - 4 pages
- The application is awfully slow
- A super lag that will help ya skip chapters without realising it
Perhaps Wiley have done this for a reason & that's to protect their books from getting shared for Free AKA Piracy.
I managed to form a habit, a legal way to read digital books that I might have not bought in their paper (hardcover, paperback) form, so Wiley; be wise & roll this ACSM back or others might just as well "drop that habit" & seek for alternatives.
tip:
How to convert ACSM to PDF :)
SproutSocial Review - A Social Media Monitoring tool
Sproutsocial - what is it?
it is an awesome social media monitoring tools that supports various social media platforms such as twitter, facebook & linkedin...
SproutSocial features:
- Organize & access social networks in one place
- Advanced search options, reach more customers, prospects & find what do they want
- Get the tweet bubble history, get to know what was previously communicated
- Analytics & advanced statistics
- and much more.
Funny that it was founded in 2009 but to me its?totally?new!
My Gmail's first "welcome email"
thought I'd share the first email i got from gmail while it was on beta back in 2004
Gmail is different. Here's what you need to know.
| show details?9/6/04 |
First off, welcome. And thanks for agreeing to help us test Gmail. By now you probably know the key ways in which Gmail differs from traditional webmail services. Searching instead of filing. A free gigabyte of storage. Messages displayed in context as conversations.
So what else is new?
Gmail has many other special features that will become apparent as you use your account. To help you get started, we encourage you to visit our?Help Center, there you can browse frequently asked questions, read our?Getting Started guide, or contact the Gmail User Support Team. You'll also find information in the Help Center on such topics as:
- Importing your contacts from Yahoo! Mail, Outlook, and others to Gmail
- Using address auto-complete
- Setting up filters for incoming mail
- Using advanced search options
You may also have noticed some text ads or related links to the right of this message. They're placed there in the same way that ads are placed alongside Google search results and, through our AdSense program, on content pages across the web. The matching of ads to content in your Gmail messages is performed entirely by computers; never by people. Because the ads and links are matched to information that is of interest to you, we hope you'll find them relevant and useful.
We're working hard during our limited test to improve Gmail and make it the best webmail service around. Thanks for taking the plunge with us. We hope you'll enjoy Google's approach to email.
Thanks,
The Gmail Team
P.S. You can sign in to your account any time by visiting?http://gmail.google.com
Mobile site review - Batelco 181 directory
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In my previous post [The future is mobile] I have briefly pointed out that the web is moving towards the mobile web [ web apps & native apps ].
Building for mobile is tricky however, I have summarized ?building for mobile guidelines? into the following points :
- Simple options
- Lack of images
- White space
- Prioritized content / Publish the Bare Minimum
- Clean Markup
A very smart & wise initiative from Batelco is developing a mobile version of their telephone directory site that enables mobile users to search for public/private telephone numbers and their addresses.
You can fireup your safari on iphone or just browse the site on your BlackBerry device @ http://m.181.bh/ as you read.
A side note: the site detects mobile devices and redirects accordingly. [passed on iphone and BB]
Pointing your browser at the link above will lead you to this:
The site contains 4 main block elements:
- A very simple header with the title to the left and the logo to the right
- An option to switch to the full version of the site
- Language switcher [AR/EN]
- And the most important element a single search box with a title ( name ) and a search button
A user experience expert wanna-be might jump up and say: hey where are the instructions to use the site?
Here is how to shut him up, how old is the internet in Bahrain 15+ years? I guess google & yahoo embossed that function into our brains so whenever we see and input box with a button next or below it that means that the site will submit whatever keyword I input in that field and I will expect an action in return hence the baby duck syndrome.
Notice that the site supers my previous post on search as a dominant function!
Pizza, is what I used as a search term ? don?t even ask why hehe! Carrying on?
Here is how the SRP or Search Result Page for the term ?Pizza? looks like:
3 additional blocks were added to the SRP besides the records ( 5 records per page ), the 3 additional blocks are :
- The counter strip ( Displaying 1 ? 5 of 31 results )
- Refine, a smart filtering mechanism
- Next and Previous
- new search link was added on the language block
Hmmm, so why didn?t I get to choose the category from the first page before submitting the query?
Remember the screen size is too small to be able to fetch all possible categories & areas in it, However the backend is kind of smart, once you search for a term the taxonomy system will only show you related categories to your search term, in our case ?Pizza? falls into food and restaurants category & somewhere in the backend this term is somehow linked to that category ( see the image below ).
Note: If you are an Iphone user, then no problem, you will still be using the iphone User Interface to scroll through the options in the drop down box J #thankSteveJobs
There is one thing that confused me for a second and that?s the light blue circle with the letter B in it which I think it stands for Business, and R stands for Residential ?
Carrying on ?
You can see that the contact number is highlighted as a link (on iPhone Ipods only), guess what happens when you tap on it ? No, it doesn?t Dial, it will overlay the ?create new contact or Add to existing account? option, in my opinion it should have been Dialing the number out ? but hey its just me!
Click on more and it will show you more information including the map but it won?t go native, native as in using the device GPS to plot the direction from your location to the destination? but it?s still a good option to have a map of the location.
Lets jump to the site?s content size, below are to snaps the first one is before search and the second one is after search :
Ignore skype script thingy, that comes with skype when you install it, the biggest file size is a javascript file that belongs to google analytics, not really a big problem since they have placed the tracker at the bottom of the site ( the footer ) which means that it will only load when top DOM is loaded .
16 KB before search and 17 KB after search ?I like :) [ excluding skype?s JS ]
The Markup
The markup behind it looks intact so far with one error and 2 warnings, it?s a very simple error that can be fixed on the fly be specifying the <alt> tag for the image used, it will basically show the alternative text if the image is not available or if images were turned off by the client.
One thing though? the document type declaration used is :
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
I?m not very keen when it comes to mobile DOCTYPE but I think they should have used XHTML Mobile profile DTD
Conclusion
The Batelco 181 Telephone directory mobile site is very simple and easy to use; it?s probably one of the first noticeable mobile sites in Bahrain, enhancements can be applied for example, by clicking on the contact number the phone should dial that instead of copying and pasting.
I?m sure that there will be enhancements applied & that explains the GA tracking code to gather useful information, If interpreted correctly it will give a very useful insights on how to improve the site sort of business intelligence or BI data reports!
But so far, two thumbs up! ;)
Teambox a twitter like opensource team collaboration platform
Gosh i love it, ever suffered trying to get people within your team or agencies to use the intranet to update project status and or give their feedback?
TeamBox will diff. change that! it's a cool twitter like opensource platform that allows you to share tasks, messages, files, wiki pages etc, its fun and easy to use!
Did i mention that its free opensource? and you can host it at your end too ?