Google Talk Guru

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/03/google-talk-guru.html

 

The following is my transcript with the Guru. It could answer some questions.

 

me : weather in hyderabad

guru:

Weather:
Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India
29°C, Icy
Wind: NW 6 km/h
Hum: 16%
Thu: 20°C-37°C, Mostly Sunny
Fri: 19°C-38°C, Clear
Sat: 21°C-38°C, Clear

me: india capital city

guru

Sorry, 'india capital city' did not return any results.

me: president of america

guru

Sorry, 'president of america' did not return any results.

me: prime minister of india

guru

Sorry, 'prime minister' did not return any results.

me: speed of light

guru

Calculator:
the speed of light = 299792458 m / s

Sent at 12:07 PM on Thursday

me: define:musings

guru

Glossary:
Musings: Thought and thinking are mental forms and processes, respectively ("thought" is both). Thinking allows beings to model the world and to represent
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musings

me 2^32

guru

Calculator:
2^32 = 4294967296

Cricket Musings

An India-Pakistan cricket is the match and that too in a cricket world cup semifinal, its not just another cricket match. Cricket will be the winner at the end of it. I was as excited about this match as those were around me, and was truly looking forward for it. Before that accompanied excitement dies,India has kept its track record of never loosing a match against pakistan in cricket world cup. .. It was an overall good bowling performance. Many People including me criticized about dhoni’s decision to drop ashwin and take nehra back into that team. That too after Pakistan spinners doing very well over a flat track, it made me feel more miserable. But Dhoni proved me wrong again. Though he has been out of form with bat, his captaincy is unquestionable , it was his smart move with Nehra , and Nehra has done the magic with the ball in yesterday’s game. It’s not just with Nehra, every one bowled their best and it was overall a team effort.

 

Dhoni = Keeper + captain + Batsman.

Even if he fails in one department, he is handling 2 departments. Before Dhoni, we were struggling with two issues Captain who doesn't perform, Wicket keeper who can't bat. Dhoni solved both the problems. Off late he is not batting as well as he used to. But I think he is still a very valuable member of the team.

 

 

2 wickets from every one, especially when India doesn’t have a specialized 5th bowler its just good. It was a disciplined bowling and fielding by every member of the team. Our first extra was in 37th over we bowled. We didn’t drop a single catch and even the misfielding was just for couple of times and it didn’t cost us more than 2 runs. Dhoni kept claiming about those extra 20 runs in the batting powerplay, batting through the innings and poor fielding and this is the time for dhoni to praise the indian team fielding and with the discipline with which our bowlers bowled.

iPad2.0 Announcement

· CPU:  Based on new A5 dual core processor.  Up to 2x faster than A4.  Same low power consumption as A4.  First dual-core tablet to ship in volume.

· Graphics:  Up to 9x faster graphics.

· Form Factor:  iPad 2 is just 8.8 mm thick.  33% thinner than iPad 1.  Thinner than the iPhone 4. 

· Display:  Same 9.7” display. 

· Weight:  iPad 2 is 15% lighter than iPad 1.  It weighs just 1.3 pounds, versus 1.5 pounds in the previous generation.

· Cameras:  New front and rear camera.

· Inertial sensors:  Accelerometer, compass and new gyro just like the iPhone 4 and 4^th generation iPod Touch.

· Video mirroring:  The iPad will have HDMI mirrored video output. Up to 1080p. Anything you see on an iPad screen you see on HDMI. Works with all apps, supports rotation, no setup or configuration, and you can even charge your iPad while plugged into an HDMI gadget. The HDMI accessory will cost $40.

· Battery Life:  Same 10-hour battery life and over one month of standby. 

Looks like Apple concentrated more on hardware now. The iPad2 announcement was all about competent hardware specs(the announced iOS 4.3 offers only a few minor improvements such as Facetime for iPad, WiFi hotspot and a speedier Safari browser). They are combining continuous hardware innovation plus price reduction by which they keep raising the bar for the rest of the industry. I’m impressed with what they have done to make such serious hardware improvements without any discernable tradeoffs.

Dropbox : Why is it popular?

Dropbox is a great cloud-based online storage product. Whatit does exactly.. There would be a folder. You'd put your stuff in it. It would sync. The best feature is that it is very easy to sync in all the devices and run in windows, mac or linux. Its totally painless and it just works. Dropbox works better when you're sharing with others mainly because it syncs to the cloud so you don't have to make sure someone picks up your changes. Also it does backups of every change, which is nice when someone in your group accidentally overwrites a file, or, worse, deletes the entire folder. You never have to think about version control, file sharing. You never have to wake up with the though you have to carry your USB device or share your files and folders. It does lot of things..

 

1. Executed a solid Free-mium model.
2. Rewarded users with more "free" storage by referring more users.
3. Easy to remember name and URL.
4. You can install the app in your CPU and it's folder syncs (easily) with the cloud account.
5. Multi-platform app (iOS, Android, RIMM, WP7 etc)
6. It uploads and opens documents, pictures and video.
7. Multi-user folder sharing
8. Cheap and effective business model (Paid accounts are reasonably priced)
9. Free accounts have no ads (how about that?)
10. They focused on user experience than adding tons of features, bells and whistles

 

You could see the slide deck on dropbox below with lot of lessons for startups and other valuable stuff.

 

Click here to get yourself an account: http://db.tt/c1BVA4o Get yourself a dropbox account and help me out in that process by clicking the link http://db.tt/c1BVA4o I will get more space in my dropbox account.

 

Nokia + Windows Phone 7

So the Greatest hardware meets the amazing software. Good to hear that Windows Phone 7 will be on all smartphone price points not just high end. Nokia is very strong in standard cell phones but definitely not a leader in SmartPhones. Nokia are good at producing hardware……they simply now produce to hardware baseline so it runs WP7. But the question is “how is Nokia going to produce magic hardware that will prompt people to buy windows phone?”  Nokia has devoted fans. They just buy whatever Nokia is selling. All these fans see something in Nokia, a cultural backbone, a design philosophy which is uniquely Nokia’s. How can they possibly maintain that backbone while depending on an OS made and designed by another company? Lets hope it will be win win situation for both. Zdnet used a very nice graphic. The product mix looks awful.

 

Pandit Bhimsen Joshi passed away. One who gave his magical voice to popular DD song "Mile sur mera tumhara" is no more. It would be disrespectful if I put this in the blog title. We have been listening to just him since the Doordarshan Days. One of his lesser known music is the bhajan written by mahatma gandhi and the music maestro Ilayaraja did composition for it. It is surely worth a watch. If you have any his music do share it here in the comments.

 

Hardly Working

Link Via ehowa