Say No To Piracy, You'll feel good and In Control

I realized , Piracy brings chaos to your life as a side effect (apart from the ethical debate).
Being pirated (and hence free) , we d/l tons of songs, pdf, software .... that ultimately just add up to the space in hard drive.

The Cost of products still remain a debatable topic, but being into software industry, I feel there exist sufficient free and legal options for the masses.


Saying no to piracy and returning to good ol' days of selected few.

• Started buying songs rather than downloading via questionable sites (6 rs a song is not a bad deal)
• Switched to Open Office (till I get my office 2013 shipped )
• Started using VS Express for personal use(more than enough for now)
• Photoshop gone, LightRoom purchased, Photoshop CS is supposedly free* so keeping that for now.
• eBooks are next :)
• Movies are all gone thanks to a recent hard drive crash :)
• Said good bye to torrents the day btjunkie died.

Update 2020:  Office License, Photoshop License - Check. VS Code is superb, VS Community edition is fairly extensive, No Pirated e-book since 2013

Feels good to have less and relevant content.

Say No To Piracy, You'll feel good and In Control







*http://www.techspot.com/news/51316-adobe-offering-creative-suite-2-for-free-but-they-didnt-mean-to.html
http://lifehacker.com/5973750/download-adobe-creative-suite-2-including-photoshop-and-illustrator-for-free
http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/index.html

Google hangout App - first review

Google released the hangout App, which unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?)  replaced the talk app

The app though good for the hangout experience, certainly misses out on talk capabilities. I don't see it as a talk replacement. Google certainly is looking at streamlining its product suite, but a planned thinking seems to be missing (or they might be launching them all as betas to get use feedback).

Keep was redundant after google tasks, same ways talk messaging app and Google plus seems to be crossing each other.
With The new app, Google seems to have reduced redundancy by getting rid of talk, but in turn reduced the user experience.

Here are my list of feature that went missing -

• I don't want to talk to all my contacts on google plus, the new shop lists them all. 
• How do I know who is online?  It's not too clear. 
• Sorting contacts by availability / frequency etc is missing 
• Finding contact from the huge list is cumbersome, it's definitely not "instant"  messaging
• No invisibility
• doesn't work with other xmpp contacts anymore

Let Me know your thoughts on the new app experience and do watch out Google INC 2013 live at  https://developers.google.com/live/

More: http://www.androidauthority.com/android-4-3-nexus-7-32-nexus-4-lte-x-phone-google-smartwatch-missing-210668/

http://thedroideffect.com/google-io-day-one/

TechEd 2013 Pune - Stats

Pune got a chance to host its First Microsoft TechEd. A Fun filled knowledge and Information Extravaganza with Loads of parallel tracks, QnA, Sessions and work on cutting edge technology.

Here's the Gist of the session via the Twitter sharing over two days :)

The List includes Most shared URL's, Most Mentioned People, Top Tweeters , Devices used and such ...

XLS

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0Ah6xxjYO0HXEdFc1eTJTdXRDMnpnXy1iNVR0ejNiWFE&output=xls

PDF

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0Ah6xxjYO0HXEdFc1eTJTdXRDMnpnXy1iNVR0ejNiWFE&output=pdf

I plan to come up with a generic App across platforms on similar line.

Wish me Luck

Keep Coding :) 

Google Keep - First Look

Being a Long term Google Fan and enthusiast, I went through the much publicized new product from Google : Google Keep.

At the First look of it, Only three things come to my mind:
Tad to little, Too less and Too Redundant.

Yes It is clean, targeted and I am sure Google will add more killing features sooner than expected, but:

1. Why Does Google want a Redundant Note application when It killed Notes earlier, and already has Tasks (with corresponding Mobile interface as well)

2. As Far as competition is concerned a lot of features are missing (even when you compare them with Google Lists (in Gmail) - Priority, Due Date to name a few.

Is this the "Concentrated" Efforts and "Channeling Strength"  for which they needed to kill Awesome products like Google Reader !


I have been a ardent FAN of Google and it's vision, Ideology. BUT Lately they have been going hay-while, If you can't make it commercial, Hire someone who can - That's why Microsoft has Steve Ballmer , Not everyone can be Steve Jobs, (A Techie + A Businessman).

You might end up losing Fans, and Time both (in Re-Engineering existing products). Why can't they use the Note/Lit API's that they already expose (and people use it) to make A robust product.

Even Reader would have made a killing o this.

I have been using Feedly/GoogleReader with  Evernote for an end to end tracking of my favorites.

Google Can Kill whatever they like, It's their product, and their Money , but at least do a market research !




I am sure Steve Jobs succeeded in killing the spirit of his Toughest Competitor in the passing
ref:

1. http://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2012/07/05/googles-focus-a-nod-to-steve-jobs-advice/ 
2. http://cnettv.cnet.com/60-minutes-overtime-steve-jobs-advice-larry-page/9742-1_53-50113603.html

#Fail #Shame