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Google Gesture does not work on my Android phone

If you’ve been reading about Google Gesture, the new hand-writing based search mechanism on android phones and have not been able to find it to download, there is nothing to worry about. If  you have any OS version that is lower than 2.0, the app will neither install nor will show up in your Android market. Similarly, if you are outside US, the app is expected not to work.

So if I use the QR code on my good old G1 with an older OS, the QR code and URL is recognized but no download is available for my phone. Time to buy a new android phone?

This fact is also confirmed on the discussion groups here on Google Gesture’s own discussion forums. 

If you have a device with 2.0 OS and you are in US, you can download the software from http://gesturesearch.googlelabs.com/download.html .

Google search has 4 out of 5 senses if you are on Android

You can touch, you can see, you can hear when you are searching Google on Android phones. Human beings are said to have 5 senses including touch, see, hear, smell and taste and then some of them have a sixth sense too.

Android phones can search based on what they see through their camera, what they hear from their microphone and what do they feel when the user touches them on the touchscreen. To see all these three in action, grab a Google Android phone and start using Google Search for mobile on that.

I’ve already discussed how Google search responds to the two senses i.e “hear” and “see” in my earlier article “Google gives eyes and ears to mobile“. Today I will also mention the sense of touch. All android touchscreens are quite brilliant and here is an application that gives the sense of touch to the android phones.

Google Gestures allows you to search using the written gestures. The app comes from Google labs and is available for Google Android platform only. Here is the official announcement of the availability of the Google Gestures and you can download the application from to Google market or here from the Google Labs page.

You must be wondering, if touch, see and hear are the three senses, where is the 4th sense that Google has given to its search on Android phones? Well, every search that happens has a background knowledge of you and your location. GPS in the phone tells your location and your search trend and surfing history tells about your interests and eventually this helps refining the search to a big extent. I take that as the 4th sense of Google search on android phones 🙂

Skype client is finally available for Symbian phones and Nokias

Skype Symbian client for Nokia has not been fully functional with voice so far but things have finally started to change. Skype’s official client for symbian phones is now available for free download that lets you pretty much do everything that you can do with your desktop version of Skype. You can make calls, receive calls, join conferences, receive and send instant messages and what not. This has been a surprise for me actually that the client was not officially available yet officially and skype fans have been using Fring for all the skype features on their handsets. Right now, Skype mobile client is available on Symbian platform, Nokia N900, N810, N800, obviously iPhone and for PSP as well. The list of compatible Nokia devices can be found here. Here are a few screen shots from my Nokia N82

So simply point your mobile browser to http://www.skype.com/m on your mobile phone to install the app or click here to view the site on your desktop.

Sandisk 32GB Microsd available for order before release

After unveiling announcements by leading memory manufacturers for their 32 GB Micro SDHC cards, memory users like me are anxiously waiting for the retail availability of this card. I have been waiting for more than one and a half year for a larger memory card and have been enjoying using my 16GB Micro SDHC card for more than one and a half year. If you are too impatient, you can go ahead and pre-order the new 32 GB Micro SDHC card for your device right now which is scheduled to be available somewhere in april.

Power Consumption – Laptops are better than Desktop computers

If you have been a desktop computer user and are planning to upgrade your machine in near future, please do consider the fact that the power consumption of a Laptop Computer is way less than that of a desktop computer. So we recommend you buy a laptop instead of a desktop, not only to give you more mobility, convenience of use but also to save power and support green computing. Lets look at the topic in a bit more detail.

Whey laptops are inherently power efficient? 
From the initial days of laptops or notebook computers, they have been including chargeable batteries that allow the computers to run without power supply for some time. To increase the operating time on a given battery, the computer components have especially been designed for laptops to consume low power.

How power efficient are laptops compared to the desktop versions?
Laptop computers are as powerful as their desktop versions in capability, but they normally save more than 85% power when computing at their maximum capacities. This graph shows a typical comparison:

For example, the laptop I’m typing this article on, is costing my 65 watts of power. While average desktop computers cost more than 450 watts of power. It also depends if you are using an LCD or a CRT monitor on the desktop. CRT monitors take significantly more power than LCD monitors.

Justifying the initial cost difference
So if you are planning to buy a new computer with latest specs, laptops are available in all latest performance parts and components. Only factor that hinders your decisiont of purchasing a laptop is the initial cost. Though, these differences are also diminishing constantly, here is a simple analysis to convince you further.

A typical desktop computer with a monitor screen costs around $600 and lets say will be useful for next two years. An average laptop with similar specs will cost you around $900 and will have a similar useful life of two years. So the laptop costs you $300 more than that of your desktop.

If you run both the computers for five hours a day, you will definitely save more than $300 in electricity costs in two years so in the longer run you will save money as well as power on laptops.

Netbooks are even a lower cost and lower power variant that will be a good option if you are not a power user. Netbooks have longer battery life, smaller screens, optimized processing and are even more convenient to use for some users.

Nokia 5530 supports 16 GB Micro SD card

It’s been quite some time we’ve seen a larger Micro SDHC card than the 16GB one I have. I’ve been posting about 16GB memory card compatibility earlier as well. This post is an official confirmation that Nokia’s touchscreen phone 5530 ExpressMusic supports 16GB Micro SD cards. I have this SanDisk’s 16GB card and it works great in my phone. See photo below:

So if you are planning to buy a new Nokia touch-screen phone that’s S60 3rd edition like my Nokia 5530, you can always get a memory upgrade for a lot of stuff that you can do with this device. Memory and bandwidth are never enough for me 🙂

What is Google Voice?

After my last article on Google Voice and accessing it from outside US, I got several emails asking me more about Google Voice. Come on guys, you could google that, couldn’t you?

And then I saw Google’s post on their own good blog that explains it. So watch this video if you are still not clear about what is Google Wave:

And here are some more video links related to Google Voice features.

  1. Voicemail transcription
  2. One number
  3. Personalized greetings
  4. International calling
  5. SMS to email
  6. Share voicemails
  7. Block callers
  8. Screen callers
  9. Mobile app
  10. Conference calls