mako

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Note 1: So you got a Nexus 4. Congratulations. You have an incredibly powerful device in your hands. This post is not N4 specific, so you can try several of these with any top-of-the-line Android device. N4 because all of these have been field-tested on mine. If you've got interesting apps/uses to share, shoot in the comments, I'd love to hear 'em. Otherwise, if 'Angry Birds' is all you've done, read on, you must. ;)

Note 2: I'm sure someone at Google is huge Guillermo Del Toro fan. Galaxy Nexus was code-named 'toro', Nexus 4 is code-named 'mako' (ref: Pacific Rim).
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Part I: use mako

• Lock screen
• Home screen
• Computer-phone connectivity
• Travel apps
• Special mention

Part II: root mako

Part III: sudo mako



Part I: use mako

a) Lock screen

Widgets were always the strength of the Android ecosystem, and 4.2 Jelly Bean added the capability to add widgets on the lock-screen. There are several lock-screen widgets, but none standout like Roman Nurik's DashClock widget, which is beautiful, and isn't heavy on the battery. There are several extensions for this widget available in the store, so suit yourself.




















b) Home screen

I use the Android stock launcher. What you see in the background is the Ice Galaxy Live Wallpaper. This fellow, Maxelus, makes beautiful wallpapers. Most of the widgets are created using Zooper Widgets, and the icon pack is Minimalist.

Nova Launcher is a popular choice for launcher replacement. It gives you a lot of options to customize just about everything. A shoutout to Buzz Launcher, which attempts to create a marketplace for out-of-the-box homescreens, which you can download and apply in a flash! Worth checking out if you are among the lazy ones.


Head here for some inspiration.

c) Computer-phone connectivity apps (Productivity)

Chrome to Phone - Send links from Chrome browser on desktop to your android phone.

Phone To Desktop - Send links from your android phone to Chrome browser on desktop.

Desktop Notifications - Get notifications from your phone on Chrome browser on desktop as desktop notifications.

AirDroid - Transfer files to/from phone to desktop over wi-fi. Send SMS, use phone camera as a webcam, manage contacts, apps, music et al, from your desktop.

TeamViewer - Remote control/remote desktop your computer from your phone over a data connection.

GOM Remote - Control GOM Player on your computer through a remote-like interface on your phone.

Unified Remote - Use your phone as a keyboard/mouse for your computer.



d) Travel apps

FlightTrack - Beautiful interface which shows flight path on a map. Gives schedule and gate information. Excellent, excellent app.

Currency - Offline currency conversion.

Google Maps / Google Translate - Their 'offline' mode is sweet! Download maps, and language packs for offline use! Very, very handy if you are planning a foreign holiday soon!

Triposo - Travel guide.



e) Special mention

SMS Backup+ (backs up SMS, call logs, and now WhatsApp messages to Gmail!),
Clean Master (clear system cache),
Battery Doctor (battery optimisation),
CamScanner (excellent app to get scanner level quality for documents through the phone camera),
TrueCaller (it's creepy how they get the unknown numbers right, but they do),
Light Manager (customise phone's LED notifications),
SphereShare (photosphere images sharing community),
TV Show Favs (track TV show episodes), and
Default App Manager (manage default apps for any phone action).

...and since you will install so many apps, it is easy to get lost. Enter: App Dialer, yep, an app to find apps installed on your phone!




Part II: root mako


Rooting gives you the ability to flash custom ROMs on your phone. I haven't flashed any custom ROMs yet, I am pretty happy with the stock ROM. But rooting allows you to make full backups of your phone, and some pretty nifty apps. Most of the methods of rooting Nexus 4 factory resets the phone, and guides are easily available if you google it.


The method I used doesn't factory reset the phone. (Motochopper method)

1: Get motochopper and the drivers from here.

2: Root. Yep, that simple. A full guide here (they even have a video!). The guide is for Galaxy S4, but it works just the same for Nexus 4 (I've done it!).


All the other methods unlocks bootloader first, and then applies root. Hence the factory reset.

Motochopper roots without unlocking the bootloader. Once you have achieved root, you can unlock your bootloader using BootUnlocker (yep, there's an app for that!). Android 4.3 update was announced today, so there's a decent chance you'll lose root after the update. You can use Voodoo OTA RootKeeper to preserve root during the OTA update.








Part III: sudo mako

Well... you have a rooted phone. What now?

ShareKM - My favorite root app's gotta be ShareKM. It's brilliant! It connects the phone to your computer over wi-fi/data/bluetooth. Slide the mouse pointer from the edge of the screen, and voila!, the mouse pointer jumps to your phone! You can now use your computer's keyboard to type on your phone, or copy text from one to the other. It's really neat, you should check it out if you have a rooted Android device. Video of this app in action embedded below:





OBackup - Nandroid Backup - Nandriod backup means a full image backup of your phone. So if you mess up something tinkering, you can always restore the phone exactly to how it was. OBackup does cloud backups and you can schedule your backups, which is pretty neat.



LMT - LMT enable features on stock Android that are typically available on custom ROMs, and is often the reason why people do install custom ROMs. It isn't avaialble on Google Play, but can be downloaded from here. A full review here, and video of the app in action below:






Spend time configuring your phone, it'll be worth it. Tinker. Enjoy.

mako...

Multiple Chrome-gasms: Youtube Ed.

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Note 1: I have professed my love for Chrome before. Here's some more.

Note 2: Yes, yes. This is a cheap way for me to get a new post up on my blog. Just like the previous Chrome post. :|
------------

We all use Youtube. A lot. And sometimes, I find myself saying, "I wish it was possible to ... on youtube." It gets irritating sometimes. Here are some of the brilliant things you can do with Youtube using Chrome extensions:

1)
ChromeTunes.
Make a music player out of youtube right inside your browser.

So, you install this beautiful looking extension, make a playlist on Youtube, and add it to this extension. So now you have a music player in your browser, powered by Youtube. And yes, the player offers looping of playlist/songs. So that's one headache gone. And, you can search playlists on youtube from within this extension and play them. So on a fine sunny Sunday morning, all you need to do it search "old hindi songs", and there you have it - a fine sunny Sunday morning with music.

2)
Picture-In-Picture For YouTube.

I love this one! Imagine you are watching a tutorial, or a loooooong speech. You want to be able to magically switch tabs and multi-task, listen/refer to the video, or occasionally take a glimpse of the video. After installing this extension, you will see a "PIP" button below your video. Click, and enjoy multi-tasking while watching the video!

3)
Popout for YouTube. 

If you want more flexibility than Picture-in-Picture, and you want the video to completely pop-out of the browser window, use this. It adds a button on the top right to pop-out the video. Of course, Picture-in-Picture fits better in a use-case where you want to primarily work on the browser while doing your work.

4)
YouTube Downloader.

It's so difficult to find a downloader for youtube which actually works! Well, this one does. It adds a button below the video to download the video, in mp3 or HD video.

5)
Skip ads on YouTube.

Ever got frustrated of waiting for 30 seconds to compulsorily watch an ad before you can watch the awesome video you just opened? This extension adds a button above the video to skip the ad and immediately start the video.

6)
Auto Replay for YouTube.

Adds an option below the video to play the video on loop. Even only a part of the video.


Bonus: I get annoyed ever so often because I have streamed a video to watch later, then I play it, switch to full-screen, and bam! All the effort gone down the ditch, because youtube starts streaming "HD" quality for the full-screen. Guess what youtube, I don't want HD! Fortunately, there is a way to turn it off. Access your youtube settings (while logged into youtube) here. Choose "I have a slow connection. Never play higher-quality video", and hit save. Phew.


Multiple Chrome-gasms: Youtube Ed. ...

Multiple Chrome-gasms

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Note 1: I know, I know. I haven't blogged a lot lately. <- One clichéd sentence which is to be found far too often on the blogs of people who "think" they are regular bloggers, and "think" that they attract a decent blog-o-dience. So, I will avoid it. Though, I swear that there have been atleast five instances in the last three months, when I almost got myself to write something random that had popped into my head.

Note 2: It was only a little more than 2 years ago that I liked Firefox so much, that I likened it to a cake, a suggested Icing for it. 2 years later, here I am, broken-up with Firefox, in love with Chrome, so much, that I thought I should write about it. Also, this is a cheap way for me to get a new post up on my blog.
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Google Chrome was awesome. But now, Google Chrome has become so much more super-mega-dooper-awesome, had it been a girl, I would have married her. Yaa yaa, don't give me the looks just yet. Read on!


I will try to avoid wasting your and my time, by assuming that you know that cutting edge is baked right into Chrome, like the silent updates, amazing omnibar, neat Translate integration, slick memory management, a separate task manager, minimalist design (down to the last pixel), blazing JavaScript engine, and advanced download experience (oh the joy when you click on a file currently downloading, and it goes "Opening in x seconds..." ), to name a few among several others. And who can deny that the incognito mode comes handy in times of need.

So, let me not talk about all that, and instead talk about the additional things that make Chrome awesome (for me).


1)
Let me start by introducing 'Incredible Start Page'. This replaces the standard 'New tab' interface of Chrome, and, well, this is what my 'New tab' page looks like now, and I love it!

Incredible Start Page

2)
Sync. Sync. Sync.
'Sync (to Cloud)' is a buzzword in tech today, and not without reason.


So, you can setup sync in Chrome ( Options -> Personal Stuff -> Set up sync ), which will sync your apps, extensions, bookmarks, and autofill information, among other things, to your Google account. And with Chrome 16, comes multiple profiles ( Options -> Personal Stuff -> Users ). So, next time you are somewhere other than your own computer, just create a new user, and login using your credentials, voila, the browser becomes yours. Multiple profiles is good to have on your own computer, if several people are using it, or you need to open more than one GMail/Facebook account in the browser.


Adding to this capability is the Chrome extension 'Context', which lets you profile "extensions" usage. So, you can have a different set of extensions for work, for home, for playing games, for idle browsing, and so on. Neat.

Also, we have the 'Fresh Start - Session Manager', which saves all your current tabs as a session (which is synced to your Google account), which you can restore later.



3)
Search engines! Custom search engines feature in Chrome is sweet! This is how it works:

Right click on the omnibar, and click 'edit search engines' (or you could go to "chrome://settings/searchEngines" ). Under 'Other search engines', you can set up the 'Name', the 'Keyword', and the 'URL', in that order. The "%s" parameter gets replaced by your query when you type it into the omnibar using the keyword. In layman's terms, I have this setup on my browser, in order of the columns:


Imdb Search | imdb | http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=%s

Subtitles | srt | http://subscene.com/filmsearch.aspx?Submit=Search+[Subscene]&title=%s

Facebook | fb | http://www.facebook.com/search/?src=os&q=%s

Wikipedia | wiki | http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=%s

Twitter Status Update | tweet | http://twitter.com/home?status=%s


In effect, if I have to find something on wikipedia, I type "wiki", hit space/tab, type my query, hit enter, and voila, the page opens up! So on for searching imdb, subtitles, facebook, and yes, updating my twitter status. Sweet.

Happy creating-your-own-custom-search!


4)
Apps.

When Google first launched Apps for Chrome, they were nothing more than fancy bookmarks for websites. Well, this has changed today. Apart from the variety and range of apps available, it is their functionality which has undergone a drastic make-over, the key being, offline capabilities. So, apps now, are neat little small packages of happiness residing inside your browser with tremendous offline and online capabilities.

We have games you can play offline, like 'Angry Birds'.

And then there are games which I have played so many times, that I see them in my dreams now - 'Bejeweled'

Then we have games which defy what has been done inside browsers up until now, like 'Bastion'. Seriously, you have to see it to believe it.

We have apps that takes your mail offline - 'Offline Google Mail'.

We have a full fledged offline scientific calculator - 'Scientific Calculator'.

And, and, we have an app to remotely connect and control other computers - 'Chrome Remote Desktop' !


The day is nigh when all we would need would be a browser!  


5)
Handy Extensions.

This post would be incomplete without my mentioning some of the very useful extensions.

I have this habit of opening several youtube windows in my browser, and then play them one after the other. Well, after a while, navigating to the tabs and individually playing them becomes annoying. Enter, 'Video Controller', which complies all the open youtube tabs into a neat playlist.

Sometimes. you don't want to bookmark pages, you just want to read them later, like in an hour or so. And the open tabs annoy the hell out of you. Well, there is 'Page Snooze' for you.

'Google Dictionary', to quickly find definitions. 'efTwo', a more than brilliant replacement of the standard 'Find on page' in the browser. Try it to discover awesomeness. 'Cloudy Calculator', for quick calculations. and 'World Clocks', for people working with people across several time-zones.

Ah, and for the Google Plus fanboys, do checkout 'Google + Notifications', 'Google +1 button', and the 'Hangout Canopy', for discovering live public hangouts! :)


6)
Chrome webstore.
Google has a very well cataloged webstore for extensions and apps.


7)
Chrome experiments.
And, Google also features experiments to show what could be done inside a browser. My favorite is - 'The Wilderness Downtown'.



Do tell me what your favorite Chrome feature/extensions are in the comments! OR, you can contact me directly! :)

Multiple Chrome-gasms...



P.S.: No, Google did not give me any money to write this. Though, I wouldn't mind some.

ExcelSocial: Use facebook from Excel spreadsheet

The inspiration for building this app comes from this article on Lifehacker (this article on Mashable) about this site.

Introducing ExcelSocial, using which, from right within Excel, you can:

• Check facebook newsfeed and friends' wall
• Like/comment on newsfeed stories/friends' wall stories
• Update status/post to friends' wall

This is the first version of this app, so their might be bugs.

Use the button below to download ExcelSocial:

Feel free to send me your suggestions/feedback through the contact page.

Enjoy!


Note 1: You have to enable Macros to be able to use ExcelSocial.

Note 2: Special thanks to loneranger for helping build this app.

GMail Labs

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Note 1: It was the 'About' page on this blog, on reading which I realized, "Heck! Just two geeky posts!"


Note 2: If you are geeky enough, you would already know what is said here. If not, read on!
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GMail (by Google) is the best e-mail client. The re-vamped contact manager in GMail made me fall in love with it, all over again. The GMail Labs feature is what makes it really very exciting, and truly makes GMail better than being already the best. Enable the Lab features listed below, and see for yourself! :)




#7 Inserting Images

Enable this to insert images into your e-mails. You can insert images from your computer, or from a web link. Very handy and useful. \m/


#6 Quick Links

The good thing about GMail is that every "view" has a unique URL. Quick Links can save any "view" as a link on your left-panel navigation menu, which you can access later. For instance, there is an important mail, or a frequent search that you do. Open that, and save the view as a Quick Link. There you go! No more searches for that again, just one-click access! \m/ \m/


#5 Undo Send

"Damn! I needed to attach a file." "Oh I forgot to add a few lines". Don't these realizations hit you right after clicking the 'Send' button? With Undo Send, you can cancel the sent mail upto 30 seconds after 'send'ing the mail, depending on the settings. \m/ \m/ \m/


#4 Multiple Inboxes/Message Sneak Peek/Inbox preview

I have clubbed these 3 features as one, because they help you towards the same goal - easier e-mail access.

Multiple Inboxes - Add upto 5 additional inboxes. Use can use labels to sort specific types of mails, and make them appear in a separate inbox.

Message Sneak Peek - Just right click on the e-mail to view its contents without opening the actual e-mail.

Inbox preview - Preview inbox even before GMail loads. Extremely helpful on slower connections.

\m/ \m/ \m/ \m/


#3 Old Snakey

Old Snakey is on this list because its cool, its nice, and its geeky. Hit '&' to start and play Snake, GMail style! \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/


#2 Nested Labels

Labels help you sort mails. And Nested Labels lets you sort Labels. =)
\m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/


#1 Add any gadget by URL

This is by far the most flexible and geekiest feature, because, you can literally do anything with GMail with this. Here's how you convert GMail into GMail + Facebook + Twitter.

For facebook, add this gadget -> http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/104971404861070329537/facebook.xml

For twitter, add this gadget -> https://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml

Thats it! Access twitter and facebook right from inside GMail. :D

For a full list of gadgets, head straight to the Gadget Directory.

\m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/


GMail Labs...

Love (and Networks)

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Note 1: This is how (crappy?) my life is, I am "blogging about love" on Valentine's Day. :|

Note 2: By writing this post, I have ruined even that minuscule chance of... :'(
------------

Q: When do you know you are in love?
A: You can never know, you can just feel it.

Four years at IIT has ensured that I do not feel love as a 'human', but four years at 'The Royal Department of Electrical Engineering' has ensured that I have a feel for love as an 'engineer'. I know what I am about to write is not going to impress my B. Tech project guide (nor any girl reading this :D ), but, why do I care? He is not impressed with my project either. :D

Let us examine a simple resistive circuit.

Surely, this cannot be love. That is not how it is supposed to be! A straight line? There definitely must be something more to it. Let us try an inductive circuit.

Err...well this can never be love! True, this is often how some of the modern relationships are. Decreasing with time, exponentially, until it reaches a zero value! Oops... something's gone terribly wrong here. Surely, this cannot be true love. Lets try a capacitive circuit instead.

This seems like a good plot. We can see love increasing progressively with time, and the rise is exponential. But there seem to be two problems. First, it reaches the maximum value only after infinite time :D , and second, the rate of increase of the graph decreases exponentially, so, the relationship seems to get sluggish after sometime.


So, lets come straight to the finale now. An LC circuit. A resonant LC circuit. Here's what it looks like.

Perfect! A charged capacitor of the right rating, coupled to an inductor of the matching rating, and they fall in love. What follows is perfect resonance, in a beautiful sinusoidal wave, going on forever. True, there ARE ups and downs, but love lasts an eternity. One's weaknesses are complemented perfectly by the other. Everlasting support. Energy transferred between them constantly. Forever. In Harmony. Never dies. That's love. True love. And, if you look at that graph very carefully, and let your imagination flow a little, what you see is this...

Love is in the air....
And all you need is love!



P.S: I Love You <3

P.P.S: Yes, I really do! Its ok that you don't know me, but yes, its true...


Love (and Networks)...

Icing for your Firefox

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Note 1: This is my first "geeky" post. Pre-requisites for reading this post - you should be aware of what 'Mozilla Firefox' is. If you are not, please close this page RIGHT NOW, you are embarrassing me. :P

Note 2: The list below is only suggestive and for the "normal" junta. Certified geeks need not read it (and hence I save myself from curses from some campus junta through this disclaimer. Phew!)
------------


You've reached thus far. Congratulations! You've heard what Mozilla Firefox is. But probably you need to know a little more to exploit what Firefox really is. Even if you are aware of the so called 'plug-ins', the list below might help you a lot in enhancing your browsing experience.

Some plug-ins, which I think everybody wants to use, does not because they are not aware, and will get addicted to once they get used to it:



1. Video DownloadHelper

Ever visited youtube.com, or for that matter any site that offers video streaming capabilities, and you pulled your hair off your head because you were unable to download it.

Head straight to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006

After installing the plug-in, just visit the site you want to extract video from, click on the DownloadHelper icon, and Voila!



2. Screengrab

Ever visited the profile of someone hot on orkut.com or facebook.com and felt frustrated because you couldn't save the picture on your desktop for later viewing pleasure (because your right-click doesn't work)? :D Ok, I am not very sure if this blog enjoys a female audience, still, this plug-in works both ways. :D

Now, screengrab can help you capture any part of the web page you've opened in a jiffy. (Yes, jiffy is really a unit of time, it is about 1 ms :P )

Where to get it? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1146
Surfing orkut or facebook will never be the same anymore. :D



3. TinEye Reverse Image Search

Yup! You read that right. Always wondered what that image was? Try reverse searching the image on the web through this plug-in. Try it. Its amazing. Was looking for something like this for a long long time. This would help you figure a lot about the mysterious image that you had all along.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8922



4. EchoFon

Just registered for a twitter account? But it is a pain logging into it every time to check for updates? Well, there's a plug-in for it. If you keep your browser open all the time (as we like to do), this would help you keep a track of your tweets, and post tweets as well, right from Firefox.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5081



5. Personas for Firefox

And finally, whats Firefox to you if it isn't you own. Head on to http://www.getpersonas.com/ to get a cool new look for your window to the internet, and make it your own. Check out the cool gallery on http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/gallery/All/Popular


So, that's all folks! Until some other time, when I feel "geeky" enough to make a geeky post.
And by the way, I use some cooler plug-ins too, but they are too nerdy to write about here. If you are interested, let me know in the comments.


PS: For those who in the dark about 'plug-ins', you've got to INSTALL them to use them. :P


Icing for your Firefox...

Post blog post(ing)

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Note 1: These are the views formed by an amateur blogger, experienced ones may gratify me with some enlightening thoughts that I am not aware of.

Note 2: For bloggers-to-be, please refrain from using this post as a potential guide for yourselves.
--------------------

The very act of "post"ing a blog is satisfying in itself, in the sense that you have a sense of creation. But what you do post posting a blog is somewhat intriguing. Those geeky enough to put an analytics on their blog would want to keep knowing live statistics of how their baby is performing.

For me, after opening the analytics page once every 5 minutes after posting, what is most intriguing to me is that every time I make a post, and check the analytics data, I am gratified by gaussian-like curves which show the number of visitors on my blog. Every time! The shape is almost the same everytime, just that the peaks may vary. For starters, here is what a gaussian function looks like:



...and here is what the hits on the blog look like (Please note, some curves are a linear combination of one of more gaussian curves :P)


Ok! I am sorry. Enough of the romancing about the beauty of statistics, Mr. Gauss, and the curves (yes, these are the only curves we are aware of :'( )

Enough already about post-blog posting. Here is a little about pre-blog posting.

Some guidelines that I follow before I make a blogpost (others are free to follow these, or others, as the case maybe).

I ask myself the following questions before posting:

1) Is my post going to influence the views of the reader?

2) Is my post a society-changing post, and makes a strong point against the prevailing social evils?

3) Is my post going to make my readers laugh?

4) Am I NOT going to get ridiculed and made fun of in public for writing it?

5) Will it be appreciated by anyone?

If the answer to ALL of the above questions come out to be a NO, thats an indication that I have come up with a perfect post to be made on my blog. :D

Now that I have made my blog post, let me get back to...

Post Blog post(ing)...