How to use Airplay on your Android telephone

November 11th, 2011 § § permalink

If you own both an Android telephone and an Apple TV, until now you must have been jealous on all the Iphone owners that could use Airplay to push multimedia content from their phones to the big screen.

Well, be jelaous no more because there is an app for that . An app for your Android phone.

Eye-C is an app available for both Android and Iphone that goes beyond sharing local media files from your phone. They allow you to connect your YouTube, Picasa, Twitter, Facebook and Soundcloud accounts into one unified multimedia timeline that you can play on your big screen.

Eye-C own description:

Play mixed playlists from YouTube, SoundCloud & more on your phone, TV & stereo.
Download Eye-C Taglists for free, and your timeline becomes your own personal TV channel, music player, or photo gallery. At any point, just push play, and the feed comes to life – on your phone, TV, Apple TV (even from an Android phone), PC and more. Add a hashtag (#tag) to any video, song or picture to build a taglist – a playlist that combines items from multiple sources – YouTube, Picasa, Facebook, or even your personal music library (see below for tech specs). More sources are coming every month, so play tags – it’s easy and free.

How to geotag your camera photos

November 10th, 2011 § § permalink

Geotagging your photos is not something new and can be done in various ways:

  • Most desktop apps include a mode that allows you to place your photos on a map through drag and drop and geotags will be automatically added (EX: Picasa / Iphoto). Unfortunately these are not very friendly with large number of photos and most likely you will be ending like me to drag all the pictures from a trip over a city.
  • Web based services: Flickr, Picasa and even Facebook allow you to place the photos on maps just like their desktop counterparts. The down side? Again, large number of photos.
  • Take pictures with your camera phone. Most of the new telephones (no matter of their operating system), if they have a GPS they most likely add geotags to your pictures. The downside? Even if the mobile cameras become more and more powerful, they still don’t compare with a dedicated camera
  • Buy a new camera or accessories for the current one that allow you to geo tag your images as you take them

But what to do when:

  • You don’t want to drag and drop hundreds of pictures over a map
  • You don’t want to buy a new camera or accessories
  • You have an Android smart phone or Iphone
Well,  the answer is Geotag Photos, a mobile app that allows you to automatically geo tag your digital pictures after you have taken them. The app idea is quite simple but efficient: you start the app and synchronize the time with your camera and then you start taking pictures. Pictures will be automatically geo tagged on your desktop once you download them and the associated track.
What can you do after you geotag your images:
  • View or showcase your images in Google Earth. Here is how you can prepare a special file to open it in Google Earth. This is useful in many cases:
    • Your own viewing to browse through your memories using places
    • Showcase your vacations to others
    • If you are a real estate or a travel agency, showcase personalized offers
  • In flickr, you can browse sets/groups and streams in map mode. In addition, your pictures will appear on the city pages

Google+ is not dead and will not die…

November 9th, 2011 § § permalink

…as Slate proclaims today. This is just another (intentional?) logic fallacy article caused by over generalization or the urge for sensationalistic, traffic driving titles. Where are they right though, is the point that Google+ has no chance (did it ever had?) to overthrown Facebook dominance in the (generalists) social networks competition.

There are too many users with too much history and new features added periodically on Facebook so the chance of repeating the histories of HI5 and Myspace are pretty slim.

On the other hand, Google+ is too big for Google to fail. Doing that can have worse effects than the failures that Google Buzz and Google Wave.

Instead of dying, Google+ will be re branded. From the social network it tried to be in the social hub it can be. This means that all the current (and future) assets that Google has, will be slowly and nicely integrated together under the same concept, and they will no longer be private tools but social, collaborative instruments.

And this process is not new, but in these ADHD driven times, people are (too) quickly to forget and (too) quickly prone to repeat the mistakes of the history. Google is now in the same position that Yahoo was a few years ago, but maybe they will make it work. A few years ago, Yahoo had profiles. And then they thought that they have a large enough user base to monetize those profiles and turn them into a social network. And so Yahoo 360 was born. For reasons I cannot remember, that miserably failed (as Google+ will soon) and they turned to the social hub approach and Yahoo Pulse was born (which again miserably fails failed and it will be returning to its origins as Yahoo Profiles).

But Google stands a big chance here for multiple reasons:

  • Not like Yahoo, Google has a lot a real assets that people actually use
  • Google has a mobile platform (and a browser, and a netbook OS) where they can push their product
  • Google is deeply integrating G+ into the search results through authorship. Every author out there wants their search results optimized so they will join, use and exploit the platform

So Google+ is not dead and will not die. It will just follow its own course on another more successful track

Google+ Pages: Good News for Facebook fanpages

November 8th, 2011 § § permalink

Google+ just launched a few hours ago what has been demanded from the beginning: pages for brands. While I don’t think this is very important (yet) by itself, it is important for the effect that it will have on FB fan pages.

When G+ launched, I quickly switched from FB. Not because it was the new hot thing in town or the graphical interface of creating circles, but because of the selective sharing options.

After a few weeks, annoyed being by the continuous mass spam requests and Google ignoring the issue, I have discovered that Facebook quickly adapted and selective sharing was added. Well in fact there was there for a long time but now it simply got more visible and optimized. And I made the switch back. For good or at least for the next 2 years.

Now Google is launching pages for companies and it was forced to bring new stuff on the table to attract users from Facebook. And what they did, was simply copying the G+ personal profiles and changing a few labels. Segmenting fans of fan pages is a powerful marketing toy but without an active user base is not a tool but only a toy.

And now back to the good news: expect Facebook to retaliate in maximum 1-2 weeks (there is the pressure from the Christmas shopping season) and G+ will be once again left behind.

As a conclusion, Google+ is the greatest thing that could have happen to the users. To the Facebook users

The tech world is broken by design

September 17th, 2011 § § permalink

The tech world is broken by design will be a series of posts that cover different aspects of the tech world (hardware/software) that are obviously broken.

But what broken means in this context. Broken means that there is a huge difference between intention and implementation and this reflects on the user satisfaction, company’s revenue and progress. There are multiple levels unfortunately and all summed lead to a not so bright future:

  • User experience: what the user wants and what the user gets
  • Product development: the development cycle from the idea to the end product
  • Organizational culture: how companies function in order to transform an idea into a product
  • Marketing: what are the marketing department doing to get the product into the user’s home and the money from the user’s pocket to shareholder’s bank accounts

This series is inspired 99% by comparing how Apples does things and how the others do it. I started with this introduction to kill procrastination and have a start :)

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