IndiaTweetz – Tweets and News about India powered by Twitter

Problem: Staying away from India we missed the buzz in India. News feeds gave us the basic headlines but we missed what was being talked about, discussed, what was trending in real time,  what was making the headlines and what was not. With Twitter’s exponential growth and Indian following a wealth of such information became available but had to be filtered out.

Solution: We decided to build IndiaTweetz – a one stop place to tap the buzz in India by leveraging Twitter. We filter tweets and categorize them in tabs like Headlines, Politics, Business, Bollywood, Cricket, Technology, Jobs, Travel and Celebrities.  We also allow the ability to view tweets by cities.  For example you can search for events in Mumbai or rentals in Bangalore. You can find out what bollywood movie is being talked about the most or who just lost a wicket in an ongoing cricket match. You can also tweet, retweet and reply to tweets from IndiaTweetz by logging in with your Twitter account. We are ironing out the last few issues with IndiaTweetz now. We will launch soon and open it to public. Watch this space.

IndiaTweetz — Tweets and News about India — powered by Twitter

Blackberry Vs iPhone 3GS: An Experience Comparison

I recently switched from a Blackberry Curve to an iPhone 3GS. Here is a detailed comparison of not the specs, but the experience.

Why did I switch from my Blackberry to the iPhone?

• No WiFi on my Curve (I know other BB’s have that feature, so this can be treated as situation specific)
• Lack of application space: Blackberry only makes available the tiny space of 64 MB  /128 MB to install apps. Common RIM, really? I had a 4GB card in there and I got the message to uninstall some app to install the additional apps I wanted to install, even though I only had a very few apps installed. Given the frustration, iPhone’s 16GB sure looked inviting.
• Applications: Many iPhone apps were not available on the BB at all. Some apps like Facebook lacked major funtionality on BB as compared to their iPhone counterparts. Some apps like Yahoo Messenger were losing future development resources. With the hardware resources available, being able to use the wanted apps is important.
• User Interface: Touchscreen is definitely a plus. I remember getting a mail from evite once where I was simply not able to click a button because the tab sequence did not recognize it as something that could be interacted with and hence the browser would tab through the other hyperlinks and not give the button any focus for me to click it. I can still live with scrolling with the trackball but lack of functionality can be frustrating.
• Multiple steps in podcast syncing and lack of video podcast transfer : I tried many podcatchers but honestly, iTunes is one of the best.  So I was using the Blacberry media sync to sync the podcasts downloaded by iTunes to the BB but video podcast transfer was not supported. I did not have the patience to  convert the video format of each one to fit the BB and copying them over manually.
• Lack of multiple simultaneous browser instances: I know the iPhone also limits it to 8 but thats much better than the single instance you can have with the BB.

What do I miss about the Blackberry now?

• Keyboard Shortcuts:  I had about 20 quick dial numbers, which meant just keeping a key pressed from the home screen and boom, I was dialing a number.  iPhone now supports double clicking the home button to open up the phone favorites to decrease the path to make a call but it doesn’t  come close to having 20 speed dials. In addition, I had the shortcuts for most applications memorized. Reply, Refresh, Home, Clip, etc etc..it sure is convenient to press a key and perform an action.
• Background apps: I am used to logging on to Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk, and staying logged on. If any one sends a message, you get notified with an icon on the home screen. You are permanently connected.  If there is any activity on Facebook, same thing. You get alerted via the icon and any other vibrate/sound alert that you may have configured. The lack of this support is a big disappointment on the iPhone. However, I hear rumors that this may be supported in the future, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
• Customized alerts: I liked the granularity of control that BB has over each aspect of how you want to be alerted by various events in the different applications.  You really have complete control. On the iPhone, its a very generic configuration that has to suit all needs.
• External Mute button: It is convenient to be able to quickly mute/unmute during a call and also pause a a song quickly using the same button.
• Collation of all mail accounts in one place: It was nice to have the mails from different accounts funnel into one place and not have to check each one individually. Of course, push support on all accounts was great, but its not something I care too much about.
• Work calendar: I use lotus notes at work, and share a personal google calendar with my wife.  On the BB, life was good. Work appointments were synced with the phone through USB and Google sync was used to sync the personal calendar OTA.  With the iPhone, it was easy enough to sync the Google Calendar with the built in calendar but there is no good way to get my work calendar on the phone.
• Flash: The camera flash was extremly handy and useful on many occasions so I know I am going to miss it.

What else do I love about the iPhone?

All the reasons I mentioned under “Why I switched…” apply here. In addition, here are some other features:

• Accelerometer+Compass:  I see great potential in the future usage of the accelerometer with the magnetic compass by applications. Already, Google Maps looks pretty neat with the usage of maps+compass.  It is certainly not a reason for my switch but rather, a bonus.
• Bluetooth A2DP: Another feature I always loved the Blackberry for that got added into the iPhone now is the support for stereo streaming over Bluetooth.  In the near future, I’ll have a Bluetooth stereo headset and may be a simliar set up in the car to avoid the wire clutter altogether.
• App Store: Blackberry’s App world does not even come close to the AppStore. Selection, Variety, Ease of use. No contest.

Verdict: Even though I am missing some of the features of the BB that I had become so used to, I am happy with the reasons for making the switch. Is one device completely better than the other? No. Depending on your specific case (especially if you receive work mail through Blackberry Enterprise Server which I did not), one device may be more suitable for your needs than the other. My suggestion: Do your homework and make the right choice.

Let the smart pens take the notes

Problem:

In an environment where you have to continuously listen to lectures attentively for long hours at a stretch (like school or conferences), there are a couple of problems that we encounter today.

1. Note taking during a lecture is quite a cumbersome process. First keep track of what the speaker is saying at a rapid pace, second make a note of it in writing, third store and share it. If there are diagrams to be made note of, the problem is trickier since it is always easier to draw something quickly on paper rather than in digital form.
2. During long hours outside keeping gadgets like phone and laptops charged is tough.

Solution:

1. For the first problem, there are several gadgets that can do half the job like convert handwritten notes in paper to digital formats (Pocket Note Taker and Digimemo). But one gadget that steals the show and solves the entire problem  is a smart pen called Livescribe. It has a camera to take pictures of notes, a microphone to record voice and intelligence to convert everything to digital format and upload it for storing , sharing and even searching through the handwritten content. It costs about $200 bucks which is definitely a good investment if you are about to join undergraduate studies.
2. The second problem is solved by backpacks which consume external sources of energy (solar, kinetic) and use them to charge gadgets kept inside them. Solar back packs have solar panels that absorb solar energy during the day and convert that to electric energy to charge battery powered gadgets. Kinetic backpacks trap the energy generated during motion of the user and use that for electric charging.

Future: An enhancement to the smart pen would be it’s ability to upload the content over wi-fi instead of having to connect through USB.

With portable e-book readers like Kindle changing the way we read books and smart pens changing the way we take notes, are school bags beginning to to look like this?

Tweet your Personality

Problem: Do you find Twitter silly or overwhelming? You created an account and never came back to it? Do you think “Why the heck should I follow people I don’t know?” or “Who are these people and why are they stalking me”?  You think you don’t need to know what John Doe in the opposite part of the world ate for dinner? You don’t own a business or blog and have no need to advertise them on Twitter? You don’t know what to tweet about?

If you answered yes to one of these questions above, you have reached the right post. I am not going to motivate you to use Twitter but give you some tips on how to get started with Twitter with the least efforts and have Twitter automatically build your online personality.  ‘Cos when I started out I was like you.

Solution:

Use Twitter not to let the world know what you ate for dinner or how you got drunk at a party. Tweet about things that will represent you to the world, tweet your public personality. Just the way organizations and corporations are using Twitter to build and maintain their brand image, use Twitter to build your personal brand image. So that tomorrow if someone googles you, your Twitter account shows up and the things that you have discussed or spoken about are visible to the world. Yes, it means talk sense, have an opinion and know what you are talking about.  How can you do it? Are you too lazy?The solution I have does not require you to manually tweet anything. All that you do (good ) automagically gets tweeted and builds your personality.

1. What do I tweet? (Automagically feed your tweets): Most of us read or view a lot of things online everyday like news, blogposts, youtube videos etc. Wouldn’t it be cool that every time you read, viewed or heard something and liked it you could click a button and it would get tweeted.

Tweet what you read: First, if you don’t have a RSS reader, get one. It lets you view posts, news, videos etc from one place. You won’t have to go to multiple sites. For example, I use Google reader. In Google reader I searched for my interests like technology, puzzles, news, movies, recipes etc and subscribed to blogs and news sites that write about my interests. When viewing the feeds in the reader I click the star button to favorite the posts I liked. My starred google reader f eed is public and synched with a twitter app called Twitterfeed. What Twitterfeed does is tweets my starred posts automatically, periodically. Here is a detailed post on how to tweet your starred google reader items.

Tweet what you listen to: If you like streaming music online use Blip.fm to tweet what song you are currently listening to automatically. If you use iTunes, you can set your Twitter status to the current song or podcast you are listening to on iTunes using this script through Twitterific (if you are on your iPhone) or TwittyTunes.

Tweet what you view:

Videos: Use Google reader to subscribe to your favorite video channels or most popular videos on youtube. This is how you can access youtube’s rss feeds. Use the same technique (as described in step 1) to star your video feeds and hence automatically post them through Twitterfeed.

Photos: You can use Twitpic to take a photo from your mobile and tweet it instantly. If you are a Flickr user, you can also use Twitterfeed to post photos from Flickr to Twitter.

2. Who do I follow? : A lot of my friends lose interest in Twitter because that they don’t know who to follow.While there are some apps to help you choose who to follow like  Twitterholic: (shows top Twitter users), Twubble and Mr.Tweet (both look up your current friends and suggests more people to follow),  one of the best ways to find like minded people is to search on a topic of your interest. For example if you are interested in fashion, go to Twitter’s search page and search  for the hashtag fashion (#fashion). The users who tweeted most often with that hashtag may share a common interest with you and those are the people you can follow.

Follow lists .. that’s the best way to get value out of Twitter without having to break your head on creating your own groups. Lists help filtering out the noise on Twitter and show you what you are interested in. Use Listorious to find lists of your interest. You can search for your topic of interest and you will find several lists of users, created by other users that you can follow.

3.What conversations do I participate in?: The real value of Twitter is the real time conversation with real people from different parts of the world. My interest in Twitter was reignited during the 2009 elections when I was following Twitter’s elections channel during the presidential debates. Real time opinions and comments on the same topic by people across the globe that refreshed before I could bat my eyelids was an entirely new and exciting experience. To stay in touch with hot topics look at the Trends in Twitter or hashtags that are trending on Twitter. You can also use Twitter’s advanced search options to look for specific topics to talk about. There are several other apps to see what’s being discussed on Twitter like Twitturly which shows the most tweeted links. Very soon you will realize the value of knowing what is being talked about right now by millions of people across the planet. Its real time news, real time discussions, real time thoughts and opinions by real people. In fact the first I heard about the recent earth quake in California or about the Mumbai terrorist attacks was through Twitter. It takes a whole lot of time for breaking news to reach the traditional media. But on Twitter its instant and without intervention.

4. Is there a easy way to tweet from anywhere instead of going to the Twitter website? You don’t need to visit Twitter’s site (which does have availability issues) every time to Tweet or see what’s going on. Get one of the numerous Twitter client apps like:

• Seesmic: Desktop and web client to see tweets in multiple tabs. Like viewing my lists in multiple tabs.
• TweetDeck A desktop client that lets you organize users in groups
• Twhirl: Another desktop client
• Twitterbar: A firefox plug in that lets you tweet from your browser
• Twitlet: Adds a bookmark to your browser that pops up a box for you to tweet
• Twitterific or Echofon (for iPhone)
• Twitterberry (for blackberry)

Future: Someday I want to tweet what I am thinking consciously. There are many times I think of something but forget to write about it or mention it to anyone. And guess what some smart scientist has already figured this one out: Brain-Twitter interface.

Let the camera upload, organize and tag your photos

Problem: One of the biggest overhead of dealing with digital photos is the process of downloading the pictures from the camera , organizing them, uploading them online and sharing them with friends. Haven’t there been times when you have taken pictures at a party or outing and promised to upload them and send links to friends and then haven’t gotten to doing it for weeks? Wouldn’t it be cool if when you returned home from the party, the camera could magically upload the photos directly online to a website or your Facebook account and tag your friends while you slept? You will be surprised to know that this can already be done today.

Solution: Eye-fi is a memory card with an embedded wi-fi chip that can transfer photos directly from your camera wirelessly to a connected computer. You will not need to take the card out of the camera or look for your camera wire or the card reader. Its an SD card that fits most cameras and is available in 2 and 4 GB. Further it can even upload the photos online to photo websites like Flickr, Picasa, Kodak Gallery, Walmart (and 25 other supported sites)  or to your social network like Facebook. It also has the ability to geo tag your photos so the location where the photo was taken is recorded automatically. Once uploaded, with one click of a button on the photo albums you could order prints.

Once the photos have been uploaded to some online albums like Flickr or Picasa, the sites can automatically tag photos by facial recognition. On Facebook too, there are similar apps to do so.

Future: While uploading photos wouldn’t it be cool if the tool could figure out from your calendar or Evite invitations what event you were attending when you took the photos and automatically name the photos accordingly and categorize them. It could sync up with an online calendar, match the date and time of the photos with date and time of the events, name the downloaded photos by the name of the event and organize them in appropriate folders.

Another smart enhancement to this would be if somehow the tool was smart enough to star or favorite some photos based on the user’s personal preferences and the quality of picture and suggest that the online photo service orders prints of it. I am sure that day is not far away !

So, cut out the manual transfer of photos, manual renaming and manual tagging. Let technology handle your digital photo woes and use the saved time to enhance more of your photography skills

Intelligent Water Bottles

Problem: I was wondering what if my water bottle was smart enough to remind me to intake enough water everyday and further what if it could refill itself? Water intake is something I never keep track of and end up getting dehydrated in summer. But thanks to the wonderful innovators in this world there is already a solution to one of the problems.

Solution: HydraCoach: an intelligent water bottle that will track every sip of water you have consumed and show how much more you need to in an LCD display. How cool is that!

Intelligent Water Bottles

Future: What would be even cooler is if the water bottle could re-fill itself. What if a bottle could convert the water vapor in the atmosphere to water? Or what if it had some micro apparatus to do some chemical reaction that would create water, if not as a product or as a by-product. That would end the trouble of getting up in the night and dragging yourself to the refrigerator!

Interesting Trivia: Did you know that in space ships urine and sweat are recycled back to drinking water for astronauts?

Welcome

Welcome to Geekorporate.

The purpose of this blog is:

1. To introduce lay men to existing technology that can make their everyday life simpler.

2. To discuss future solutions to today’s regular problems.

While brainstorming on ideas for a tech startup with a group of friends, we realized that among the both of us (the authors), we had a repository of answers to several problems. Some solutions existed in the form of intellectual property or even tangibly but not every average Joe was aware of.  Some were potential solutions leveraging future or existing technologies.

It occurred to us that in the world of techies, we are aware of the latest Twitter app,  follow live blogging of Apple announcements and can dig up several reviews before making a purchase decision. But an average non-techie still struggles with the concept of Twitter, buys an iPhone but doesn’t utilize its fullest potential and still makes store purchases without reading any actual reviews. We want to make his life simpler by providing tid-bits on how he can do simple things like sync up his twitter and facebook status, use a voice app to avoid typing while driving, automate his birthday gift selector or upload his photos to his online web album without having to take the memory card out of his camera. We also will express some of our imagination of a smarter world like what if our coffee maker knew what kind of coffee the guests would like or the alarm clock was synched with my work calendar so if I had an early morning meeting it would wake me up earlier and so on..

So go ahead and get geekorporated !

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