How to write distraction free on PC or MAC?

I have tried many clutter free writing softwares, but each one has some drawbacks. Now, I am stuck with Google Docs to do clutter free writing (I am currently typing in Google Docs).

The way to do it is very simple:

Open Google Docs with your account login.

Go to ‘Format’. Click ‘Document Settings’.

Set fonts to ‘Georgia’ (which is very close to many of the novels). Set font size to 18. Set line spacing to ‘double spaced’. Set document background colour to ‘grey’. Make it default style.

Now, open a new document. press F11 to get rid of all internet clutter. Then press Ctrl+Shift+F to get rid of all Google clutter.

Now you are left with clutter free environment to type your mind. The document is saved automatically. You can open it other computers too.

The only drawback is, at the moment, there is no option to work when offline.

The Best Wish List Manager

Beginning of every new year (some times a new month), I start reworking the way I organise my things. One of the important things is to organise ‘wish list‘, aka ‘shopping list‘.

I have tried many apps in Android market, but the best one (at least to me) is ‘OurGroceries’.

Why it is the best?

1. Automatically syncs online at www.ourgroceries.com.

2. One can share the shopping list to anyone instantaneously.

3. All entries are stored, hence no need to type the same thing again and again.

4. Easy to use Android app (I wish I could move it to SD card).

5. There is iPhone app too.

6. It is free.

7. One can generate as many wish/shopping lists.

8. Once the shopping is done, with one click, one can cross-off the item.

9. There is a separate recipe list as well.

10. Recipe list can be used as task manager.

 

Twitter can’t replace Google Reader

Someone on Twitter commented to my tweet, in a tone ‘RSS readers are outdated and twitter is the new RSS reader’.

As all might not agree, RSS reader is equal to Google Reader.I have tried most of the RSS readers in the market, but nothing comes close to Google Reader. I can access it from my phone or on desktop (or laptop or netbook).

RSS Reader

Twitter cannot replace Google Reader for many reasons:

99% of time, I access twitter from my mobile. I rarely use Twitter on a PC. 3G speed is not great enough to open all the links given on twitter. Google reader is faster even in 3G network compared to links opening up from Twitter.

Twitter is like sitting on a time bomb. If you do not check twitter every hour or two, the tweets are outdated. Google reader grabs all my interesting websites and manages them like ‘solid reads’. Most of the feeds open completely within Google Reader, which will never happen with Twitter.

Twitter is like ‘open chat line’. Twitter is not just to read feeds from news channels. I use it for fun, to communicate with like-minded people, to make fun. Google Reader is serious business. All the topics that interest me can be arranged in folders and can be read very fast.

Twitter

There are only 140 characters in Twitter. Google Reader gives a good glimpse of the article, even when the websites do not allow complete feed.

One cannot search similar sites on twitter. Google reader does that job very efficiently.

Twitter is to share my mini-views, share interesting stories I read on web, share Google reader feeds, follow people whose thoughts I find interesting. I use Twitter to advertise my blogs, retweet interesting lines and web links.

No doubt, Twitter has provided various interesting websites and blogs. Now all those are sitting in my Google Reader.

Twitter is complementary to Google Reader, not a replacement.

Facebook, Twitter and Blogging

Social networking sites have replaced the age-old home pages like MSN and Yahoo. The most popular ones are Twitter (Buzz for GMailohics), Facebook (Orkut for Indians, but this is going to change soon), blogging sites (WordPress and Blogger). Social communication on internet is also done through e-mail and chatting.

Many people, including geeks, think they are interchangeable.Many people update Twitter and Facebook with the same line using Tweetdeck or similar sites.

For me, they all serve different purpose.

 

Twitter:

It is my “Internet Diary”; whatever that interests me on the Internet on that day will be tweeted. If I can hold my thoughts (including fun) in 140 characters, I would do that on twitter, and not on Facebook or blog. If I make some opinion on anything I read/heard, I would do that on twitter, not on a blog (If I read a book or watch a movie worth reviewing, I would do that on my blog) . If I come across any  interesting webpage, you tube video, blog article or a picture, I would share the link on twitter, not on Facebook.

I definitely will not wish my friends on their birthdays (or deathdays) on twitter. I would do that on Facebook, if they have one. Otherwise, I will DM them if they are on Twitter .  If they don’t have both, I will e-mail them. If they are old enough not have to any e-accounts, then I would ring them, if they are near and dear ones; otherwise, I ignore.

If any conversation on any particular topic goes beyond 2-3 tweets with the same follower, I would rather DM the conversation than spamming everyone’s timeline with one particular conversation.

I will use Twitter to advertise ME! I will give link to my every blog post, and I may do it twice or thrice in a day!

I can’t think of having more than one Twitter account for myself. But if someone wants to tweet about a particular topic, then tweeting in pseudonyms will do.

 

Facebook/Orkut:

I get invitations from people whom I have never met to accept them on Facebook/Orkut. Facebook/Orkut is only for people whom I know, whom I have met, or with whom I have spoken. It is to find all the boys and girls from school days, and all friends from college days, and interesting colleagues from your workplace. It is to keep in touch with the people with whom I had some interaction in REAL life. Twitter followers, however nice they are, cannot become Facebook friends, unless I meet/ talk with them.

I will not fill my Facebook 10-20 times day; it is not twitter to write everything I see, I hear, I read. Facebook is for my family, friends (present and past) and colleagues (present and past). I don’t want to spam their Facebook timeline with my every interests. I would give links of YouTube or some other website occasionally.

I will make a wish of Diwali or Dasara on Facebook rather than sending bulk e-mail to all my e-mail address book. I would post my recent travel photos on Facebook (I will not spam them on twitter). I would post party pictures on Facebook, not on twitter. I would write about someone’s birth, wedding or death on Facebook, not on twitter.

I will not use Facebook to link my blogs, unless the blog post is on personal note.

 

Blog:

Blog is not a personal diary. It is not a confession media. For me, it is where I would flow with my creativity (if there is any ), opinions (longer than at least 2 paragraphs), debates, and discussions. I will definitely will not give one link, one photo or one joke in my blog post. I will not post personal pictures in my blog.

I will not write any short stories on my blog. Even if I write, I will give it in PDF format too, so that the reader can take a printout to read it.

I will not write any serial (part 1, part 2 etc) on my blog as I know reader is not interested in any parts.

I would prefer to have many blogs, so that each of my interest will get one platform. I don’t like to bombard all of ME in one blog.

 

E-mail:

For everything else, there is e-mail.

 

Chat-services:

Waste of time. If it is urgent, make a phone call. If it is not, tweet me or e-mail me.

Android and iPhone

I wrote this when I bought G1, the first ever Android phone:

I resisted temptation of buying iPhone. The reasons were several.

When iPhone was introduced to the UK market, almost all mobiles were free if one was willing to pay between £10 and £30 per month on 12 to 18 month contract. But iPhone came with monthly contract as well as money to pay for the hand set. I thought it is too much and left it that way.

In no time I realized iPhone is carried as status symbol. People usually carry their mobiles in their pockets. What I started noticing was iPhone users carry their iPhones in hands and keep it on table during meetings so that iPhone is shown to the people around all the time. This put me off, and I firmly decided not to buy it.

Then Google came with Android – OS for mobile phones. I was neve

Courtsey: web

r happy with Windows PDA and hence Windows mobile was straight no-no to me. T-mobile came with first Google phone, called G1 with flat £30 per month 18 month contract with no money for the handset.

I jumped for it, and till today I am very happy with my decision.

——————-

I wrote this when I bought my second Android phone (HTC Desire):

When Google announced its entry to mobile OS, iPhone was ruling the smart phone market. Windows mobile OS was looking like a bad version of its own Windows 95. Nokia, Sony and Motorola never got hold of the idea of mobile OS.

The mobile phone industry can be easily divided into pre and post iPhone. iPhone changed the way everyone looked at mobile phones. It was calculated growth from iPod to iPod touch to iPhone (although Steve tells iPhone was invented when they wanted to build Apple TV).

Microsoft kept promising that it would come with better mobile OS. HTC built the required hardware. But Windows was not ready to leave its cumbersome start-folders-sub folders idea.

I became interested in the idea of smart phones only when 3G became more widely available in the UK. The Nokia’s etc were also offering Internet, but the Internet experience was nowhere near to the desktop experience.

During same time, social networking websites started making big waves. Orkut, then Facebook. Twitter entered. Flickr grew. You tube became social networking video channel. The way we looked at Internet changed forever. The chats, forwarded messages, sending bulk photos to bulk of friends all stopped.

Most importantly, Google gave its next best service, GMail (the first best is still its search engine). GMail changed the way we all worked on e-mail. With one account name and password, we could manage our emails, calendar, photos (Picasa), tasks (Google tasks). Google reader became smarter and quicker.

The market was really looking for competition for closed brand iPhone. Google entered the market with Android OS. As they gave all other previous services free, they made Android open source.

When T-mobile announced first ever Android device, I jumped and grabbedit. It was far cheaper than iPhone, far better than Windows OS. It did every job iPhone did. For people who use Google for everything (GMail, calendar, contacts etc), all information was automatically stored in cloud. No need to worry about connecting to the desktop every evening to sync all the data. No need to have a media player to put all the songs on to mobile. It was pure copy-paste business. Very simple and straight forward.

But still it was not iPhone in terms of looks and speed. But it did multitasking, that is why it was slow. The Android market grew day by day. The android went from version 1.0 to 1.5, then to 1.6.

When my contract was about to end, I went for HTC Desire with Android 2.1. The hardware and Android OS have leaped at least 10 folds. I got this for £30/month contract of 24 months with no upfront charge for the phone. When I am writing this, we still have to pay for iPhone if I want such contract.

I never liked Adolf Hitler. Although I very much appreciate the leadership skills of Steve, I will probably never buy an Apple product. I will leave Apple to Americans, orso-called brand conscious people.

My single line review about HTC Desire with Android 2.1 is, “Stop comparing Android with iPhone. Now start comparing iPhone with Android”. With version 2.2. on way, I am much more excited about Android.

How to read effectively on internet?

I keep trying different things to read more effectively and more efficiently on internet. My Google Reader is filled with 1000s of feeds everyday. I keep adding new subscriptions and delete few of them regularly.

Most of them are skippable after the headlines. Many of them run in few paragraphs. Few of them are as big as 10 pages.

I have found a way to read effectively on internet.

These are the steps:

1. Download Mozilla Firefox or chrome, if you still do not have one (The only use of internet explorer is to download Firefox and/or Chrome).

2. There are two bookmarklets which remove all the clutter from the web page you want to read. They are ‘tidy read’, and ‘readability”. Few of the webpages open better in ‘TidyRead’, and a few in ‘Readability’.

Tidy read: www.tidyread.com

Readability: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

3. Now add the 3rd bookmarklet, called ‘autoscroll’. http://marklets.com/Autoscroll.aspx

Thats it.

Open the page you want to read in Firefox. To remove all the clutter, click on ‘tidy read’ or ‘readability’ bookmarklet. When the web page opens with one of them, click on ‘autoscroll’. select your speed of reading (1 to 9). Sit back and enjoy!!



14 reasons why I love netbooks (over iPad)

1. Size matters:

Laptops are too big (people do still carry laptops to work and travel) to carry, smart phones are too small to write, to read and to browse internet for long hours. Netbooks fit between laptops and smartphones. Netbook screen is bigger than iPad, although it weighs slightly more than iPad.

2. Apps matter:

iPhone Os might have thousands of applications. Windows have tens of thousands of softwares, which I would like to call them “apps” too. Can iOS match the number of free and useful apps available on windows OS? To give examples, Windows live writer, OpenOffice, Baraha.

3. Video:

I am not a huge fan of watching videos on internet. Watching movies is best done on blueray player with a large flat LED/LCD screen with 5.1 Dolby surround sound. I record all the programmes I need from TV (Sky+) and watch them at my time. One can watch all videos from the internet and online TV without any hiccough on netbook. What you need decent WiFi or USB tethering if your mobile has 3G. I do watch BBC iPlayer, YouTube and various other videos on my netbook using Firefox or Chrome.

4. e-Reader:

Ctrl+Alt+right arrow, the screen tilted from landscape to portrait mode. My netbook is a fantastic eBook reader now. Lower the brightness to least, yes, you are ready to lie down and read a novel. I open ‘MobiPocket reader’, another lovely free app for Windows.

5. Brand power:

If brand matters the most, pour all your hard earned money to a big fat company so that shareholders can sit back and enjoy your money.

6. Newspapers:

I have stopped reading newspapers long ago. Sorry, I still do read newspapers, but all of them are online. Most of the newspaper sites are well-formed for internet browsing, and they look good on windows. My every morning starts with reading “Vijaya Karnataka”, a Kannada daily. The browsing and reading experience is simply superb on netbook. Can I read Kannada fonts on iPad? Does PDF files open as smoothly as they open on windows (knowing that Apple does not like Flash, I am raising this doubt).

7. Travel tool:

Netbooks are slightly heavier them iPad. You can carry spare battery if you want. You can have universal charger if you need. Any day, netbook is more productive while travelling. If you write regularly, QWERTY keyboard of netbook (at the moment, QWERTY keyboard is still better than virtual keyboards, but things will change soon!) comes handy.

8. Memory matters:

160 GB hard drive with 1GHz RAM has costed me just over £150. iPad would cost you fortune (the best iPad comes with only 32GB hard drive, which costs me £500 in the UK, more than a good Windows laptop) . If you want more space, connect 1TB external hard drive to your netbook. Can you do that to iPad?

9. Bluetooth:

It costs £1, yes, £1. Your netbook is ready for blue tooth experience, if there is no inbuilt one.

10. Browsing Experience:

The best browsing experience comes from Firefox and Chrome. Netbook can have both. iPad still does not have both. If anyone wants a portable unit for purely browsing experience, netbooks make sense, not iPad.

11. Online Music:

You can’t beat netbooks. You can have Realplayer, windows media player, and many other free players, which play almost every type of online music and radio stations. iPad just cannot match the sheer volume of it. I play Kannadaaudio.com, kannada kasturi, raaga.com, esnips.com, etc on my netbook while working on other things. Netbooks does not slow down a bit.

12. Games (Yawn):

I never played any games on computer, seriously! I don’t want to.

13. Office:

I have open office, which is free software and has completely replaced my Microsoft Office. I write, edit and store on my netbook.

14. To show off:

Yes, there is I,  iPad, iPod, iPhone…

 

del.icio.us Tags: mobiles,iPad,netbook

OMG! Official Google Reader App for Android!!

There were so many apps which supported Google Reader in Android market. The mobile version of Google reader was also there. But none of them came close to web based Google Reader experience. Finally the wait is over! Today, we have official Google Reader App in Android market.

 

From Androidcommunity website (without permission, I hope they don't mind)

It is amazingly simple to use, and works just like Google Reader on web. It has all functions of Google reader.

Account set up is done by just one click. It synchronizes automatically.

The folders are displayed neatly. When we click on the folder, the feeds are displayed nicely. When we open each post, click Menu. Single click share, e-mail, star etc are displayed.

Now, I can read more news from world wide web! Standing, sleeping, eating,…

This is THE must have app. If you have not used Google reader before, it is time to start using it.

Here is the official post from Google:

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2010/11/android-google-reader-app-is-here.html

 

 

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2010/11/android-google-reader-app-is-here.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FdtKx+%28Official+Google+Reader+Blog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

14 things I need in e-book reader

I am looking for a good e-book reader for a while now. I am yet to find one which satisfies my needs. I have tried my hands on a few e-book readers, including Sony and Kindle. I love the e-paper, long battery life and light weight.

Image from mobilewhack.com (I hope you permit to use the image)

My needs are simple:

1. Size does matter. I hate 7 inch screen. They look like bigger smart phones. 10 inch screen is ideal size to hold and read.

2. Reading and marking PDF files with ease is my first and foremost priority, because most of my journal articles are in PDF files.

3. The screen should be touch sensitive: multi-touch, pinch and zoom, touch and scroll the pages, and touch and type the foot notes.

4. I want to read Kannada (I want to write foot notes in Kannada) in my e-book reader.

5. A good browser where I can browse net when ever I want to. Browser should have pinch and zoom action, should load as fast as chrome. I am not looking for browser with Java and Flash support here though.

6. Multitasking with music. I want to listen to music when I am reading.

7. Because I want to listen to music all the time while reading, 4GB is not enough to store music and books. I want to connect my external hard drive from where my music and books come from.

8. Avid readers are avid writers also. I need an app where whole screen goes like a blank sheet, where I can start typing my article/ blog/ short story/ novel.

9. Export all foot notes, annotations, and bookmarks to a single file so that I can use them for my article.

10. When I can lend my hard cover books to friends, I don’t see the logic behind not allowing e-books to be shared with friends.

11. There are plenty of second hand hard copy books available. I want them on e-book market too. There should be an option to resell or buy used e-books. If that is too much of asking, older books (books older than 1 year) should be available for 99p.

12. Now I watch most of the movies by renting the DVDs and blue-rays, and now I have option of watching them online anytime anywhere for just £10 per month. The option is one movie at a time. I want a similar option for older e-books (let the recent ebooks can be charged as a new cinema ticket). I don’t mind paying rental money to borrow, read and return and a book, and then wait for the next book.

13. It should have an app for checking and replying e-mails.

14. Last but not the least, it should have app for good RSS reader (to be precise, I would prefer Google Reader)

Twitter, Android and me

Image from: pcphoneandnet.owrdpress.com (I hope you don't mind)

I have love and hate relationship with twitter.

I love it because it gives a great stupid free platform to send 140 character SMS on Internet for anybody to read it,  reply it,  and share it.

I love it because it gives a wonderful pseudo feeling of communicating with the whole world, although the chances of my tweets being read are near to zero.

I love it because twitter makes me release my frustrations without harming anyone.

I hate twitter because it is a big time-waster.  It gives pseudo feeling of being very busy and extremely productive.

I hate twitter because I have to,  otherwise I would sound like a twittoholic.

I hate twitter because there is no serious discussion goes on. It’s very superficial and inconsistent with too many links that take ages to open on 3G network.  And most of the links are useless.

I hate twitter because of celebrities who tweet all day about their social service,  political views,  dresses,  new movies,  bla, bla, bla…

Using twitter on its default website is a real pain.  Whenever I go on its official website, I feel like scratching the website,  literally

I don’t like to open tweetdeck on my computer. Whenever I open tweetdeck I feel like a journalist waiting for an important news!

I love to use twitter on my Android.

My first love was twidroyd.  I might have used it for several months, when I start losing interest in twitter.  It was taking too much of my energy.

After a while I reduced number of followers and moved on to twitterride (now known as tweetsride). It is good as well.

Then I moved from G1 to HTC desire.  Inbuilt friend stream was good, but inconsistent.

My life also became too busy to read and write tweet during day time.  My twitter activity was reduced to 30 minutes.

Then came tweetdeck, so far the best twitter app on Android.  I love this app,  but..

Many important Android apps started becoming fatter and fatter.  Though I am able to move many apps to SD card, my phone’s internal memory remains pathetically low,  which causes frequent crashes whenever I am using sat-navigation.

None of the twitter apps can be stored on SD card.  Most of the twitter apps are big in size.  Most of them also eat too much of space for data.  Most of them store data in the internal memory. Hence I uninstalled all twitter apps.

I am now giving another try with peep, an inbuilt twitter app for HTC.

I love following twitter apps on Android :
Tweetdeck
Twitterride (tweetsride for twitter)
Twidroyd
Twitter (official)