Tag: Google

Nexus V

Nexus 5 Package
Nexus 5 Package

I’m happy … I received my new Nexus 5 just last Thursday. You won’t believe how amazing this 3 generation leap feels … remember I’m coming from a Nexus S. 😉 I had the chance to toy around with it over the weekend and I must say: I like it. It’s well-built. It has a beautiful screen. The software is top notch (at least if you’re not as paranoid as I am).

The screen resolution is a funny matter, because the Nexus 5 is now second rank at home. Only losing to a Retina MacBook Pro. 😉

What I like:

  • It’s blazingly fast (at least generally 😉 )
  • The screen is gorgeous
  • I can now run Firefox as my main browser without killing all other apps 😉
  • Going to alarms with a swipe (in the Clock app) is a relief
  • Configuring app icons and widgets on the home screen is well done

What I don’t like:

  • I’ve come to miss several niceties of CyanogenMod over the years
  • You can’t get rid of the Search bar on the home screen (yes, I know the “home screen” is part of the “Google Search” app now)
  • The speaker (yes, only one) is crap
  • You need a special desktop app to copy files over USB, WTF?!?
  • I need to start some apps twice, because they crash the first time 🙁
  • It comes without a headset 🙁
  • The abandonment of core apps on favor of Google flavored ones (like integrating the home screen into Google Search, mixing basic SMS with Google Hangouts or transferring G+ avatars in the Phone app)
  • Google Play Music can only play the first 69 minutes of “long” MP3s, WTF?!?

Still not sure:

  • Battery life on work days
  • The devices sturdiness
  • SMS in Google Hangouts

I’m so used to CyanogenMod by now that I miss several niceties it provides over the stock Android experience:

  • Getting the Notification Center or the Configuration Tiles depending on which side of the top bar you pull
  • Directly executing actions (e.g. turning WiFi on/off) by tapping Configuration Tiles
  • Making the device behave like an ordinary USB stick when connected to a PC
  • Having something like App Guard
  • Having the ability to give apps root (mainly for Helium, AdBlock Plus)
  • Superior music player
  • Auto-unlock when the PIN is correct

None the less, I’m happy. 🙂

Update:

Battery life seems fine, even after a day of moderate use.

CyanogenMod together with Open WhisperSystems just revealed secure messaging will be baked into CM. This will allow you to send encrypted messages to others through any SMS/messaging app. 🙂

Authors@Google: Garry Kasparov

A very insightful talk with chess legend Garry Kasparov. He touches on some very interesting topics:

  • the role of intuition in decision making
  • the power in being free to make mistakes or how modern risk aversity produces mistakes
  • the psychology of playing at the top
  • how chess is a unique platform to explore the intersection of something we’re good at and the machines are bad at and vice versa (i.e. raw computing power and human intuition)
  • the feeling of playing against human, machines or both in combination
  • and a bit of Russian politics.

Enjoy!

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hf31xOhchY

Secrets of Search

Douglas Merrill from Google talks about what it takes to build a search engine for the web.

Besides that what strikes me as interesting is their choice of languages “focusing” (he didn’t exactly say that, but it’s what you understand, when he says they won a prize for it) their efforts in machine translation on: Arabic and Chinese … o.O

Transliteration and Translation Fails

So I was reading an article on the power of big South Korean companies and wanted to look up the native word and its connotations, as I knew the Japanese had something similar called “Zaibatsu“.

So transliterating the word from the article “Chaebol” to “채볼” failed. So I searched Wikipedia for “Chaebol” at the top it said “Jaebol”. o.O So I tried “재볼” and failed again. By that time I looked in the Languages section on the Wikipedia page and learned that it was actually written “재벌“.

Well, looking up the English translation for it turned up the Japanese word. m(