Tag: Google

Shifting to 8 digit mobile phone numbers: DIY method

by
Inf

As you may or may not know already, all mobile phone numbers in Mauritius are shifting to 8 digit numbers as from 1st September 2013. So if your number is 777-8888, it will become 5777-8888. So to call or SMS you, I’d need to put a 5 in front of your number. Same for SMS. More info from Emtel here.

The problem is how to change all your mobile contact numbers to add that 5 before. I hear the various mobile operators are developing mobile apps to handle it for you, but I wanted a DIY way for my S3. If you have a similar DIY way for your own mobile, feel free to share in the comments. This article is NOT a guide, but merely the steps I will take to add 5 to my own numbers. It may, or may not work for you so use at your own risk. I hope I don’t end up with a horribly broken contact list! :/ Feel free to suggest if you have a better idea, apart from using an app coded by a third-party. I’m interested in DIY methods, or how you are planning to do your own migration if your phone doesn’t have an app.

Here’s my plan:

Continue Reading »

15 Annoyances In Android 2.2 Froyo

by
Inf

I got to play with an HTC Desire running Froyo (Android 2.2) over a couple of days now. At first, I was all “Angry birds”! Then I was all “Paper toss!” and whatever other apps that people tend to fancy from the market.

However, after a few days’ worth of use, I’ve uncovered a few annoying quirks that plague Froyo. I’ll admit that I’m not really sure whether the bugs are to due to Froyo or whether they affect that particular device. It’s not nice to have to fork out a truck of money and then reading forums to see people saying “turn down battery”, “turn off Wifi” etc… in an effort to save battery. If you bought a smartphone and can’t use it fully, what’s the point?

For testing, I also flashed a Gingerbread-based ROM (Redux ROM). This should help in determining if issues were fixed.

Anyway, here’s a rundown of 10 of them, and possible fixes, where I’ve found them.Let’s see.

Continue Reading »

Review: Internet Explorer 9: The Best IE Yet

by
Inf

Who’d have thought I’d ever write a title like that? I, who kept telling friends and other acquaintances for some time now: “Scrap the damn Internet Explorer (IE), and get a good browser! Download Chrome or Firefox!”. That’s a line most tech people yell at others, whenever the others say: “that page looks broken”, or if their machines is being overrun by viruses or other kinds of malware. So much that, when asked what was Internet Explorer’s use, some people even replied “to download Firefox”.

The first reflex nowadays has been to fire Internet Explorer, go to Mozilla or Google and download Firefox or Chrome. Or Opera. Or Safari. Whatever. As long as it was a “better browser” than IE, which up to IE8, was awfully slow, with an ugly interface and was a total nightmare for web designers when it came to standards and CSS.

After hearing too many complaints, someone at Microsoft must have raised their arms and said “F* it! Let’s make a good browser this time!”. And they succeeded. From the minds of the folks at Microsoft came Internet Explorer 9, whose Beta version is out, and available for download here.

There has been lots of hype around the new IE, promising HTML5 support and a huge boost when it comes to respecting standards. Guess what? For once, the hype turned out to be true. I’d go as far as calling IE9, the best ever browser made by Microsoft. This is not surprising, considering that IE9 looks almost like the excellent Google Chrome, both in terms of interface and features. You can’t fail hard when you copy from the best. I guess that statements has been proven true. For once, I’ll be using Firefox to download Internet Explorer. Feels kind of strange…

So let’s see what IE9 is made of.

Continue Reading »

Google turns 10, Wants to help people with $10m

by
Inf

Cupcake

September marks the 10th anniversary of the godlike search engine Google, repository-of-the-Internets-and-universal-knowledge *bows*. However, the exact date seems to be a variable! More info on that at Techcrunch.

*Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake. For more on Google’s history:
http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html

Source: Google Support

The folks with the “Don’t be evil” motto want to celebrate their creation’s birthday by helping the world. So? They have launched a project called “Project 10 to the 100th”, or Project 10100. Quite a Googlish-name if you ask me!

Basically, you suggest some ideas that will help the greatest number of people possible, in any way possible (or so I guess). Then, you go on that website above, and post it there. You may even post a 30-seconds video to back your concepts.

Then? Google has put aside $10 million to kickstart the Top 5 ideas it receives. The public will be able to short select 20 semi-finalist ideas, and a board will select the Top 5 out of those.

There are a number of categories in which you can participate, which are (as listed on the Project 10100 page):

  • Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
  • Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
  • Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
  • Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
  • Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
  • Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
  • Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
  • Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don’t fit into any category at all.

That’s basically it. Now you can go suggest some ideas if you have some, or pass the message around. The closing date for ideas submission is 20th October!

Time for some fun. If you want to know how Google was born, bred and evolved, you can check out this interesting timeline of what Google’s been up to in the last 10 years. Here’s Google’s Tenth Birthday page too.

Seriously, I can’t imagine life online without Google. It’s been saving my rear for the last 10 years now! A big thanks and:

HAPPY 10th BIRTHDAY GOOGLE!

Behold Chrome: New contender in Browser Wars Arena!

by
Inf

ChromeLogo

Google just released the Beta version of its browser, called Google Chrome (why chrome anyways?). Since a few days, I’ve been seeing that pokeball-like logo all over the Internets and I thought I must add my piece of text to the already long list of blog posts about the newest browser out there. Seriously, nearly 12 million results on Google when I search for “Google Chrome”.

What’s the hype about it? Everybody is “Chrome released”, “Chrome does that”, “Chrome does this”, “Chrome makes tea”, bla bla… Let’s see… Before I move on, I need to say that Chrome is released under BSD license, and it’s Open-Source!

Continue Reading »

Google Browser Sync

by
Guru

GBSync
Google Browser Sync(GBS) is a freeware Firefox extension by Google. Independent of any OS, it embeds itself in Mozilla Firefox. That makes whichever OS supporting Mozilla Firefox, you can use GBS. In fact, what does it do? It replicates all your data across the many computers you have. Data? Uh, only for your extensions.

Continue Reading »