Got my Nexus S

Just couple days ago (17 Dec 2010/Fri), I got my Nexus S with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and yes it is amazing! Every month or so a new Android device comes along and becomes or claims to be the best device ever! I have seen quite a few, and I own some, I believe at this point it is the best one in the market as of this week! Of course, the race goes on, and probably we will see much more capable devices, probably with dual cores in the very near future.

I will be in the CES 2011 show next month, I bet many tablet devices will continue to surface in the show. Speaking of the tablets, Galaxy S is awesome, on the other side B&N's Nook Color has become very capable and getting ready for the Android 2.2 (Froyo) update in January 2011. It is priced very competitively at $249. It has 24-bit color, 600x1024 display, definitely it is very good device at this price point! I don't have it, but in the B&N bookstore I have played with it, browsed the internet, it was much better than I thought. Hackers already rooted it and how-to tutorials can be found everywhere in the Internet as usual :)

Big Buzz About Nexus S

A new Android phone coming soon from Google, and surely Google marketing is trying to make a big deal out of it as much as possible :)

Fun part, they are presenting some puzzles for twitter peeps to solve (follow @googlenexus)

Here is the second puzzle:
Puzzle Challenge #2: There is more than meets the eye at http://goo.gl/MKoc8. You'll find the answer in a tweet.

What's the clue? "There is more than meets the eye ..."! In the web page (surprisingly super polished web page, very nicely designed, unlike any other Google web site :)) all you see is the intro to their new phone!
However, if you take a look at the page code, you will see the following ascii-art!

                      I                I                      
                       I      ++      I                       
                        IIIIIIIIIIIIII                        
                      IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                      
                    IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                    
                   IIII   IIIIIIIIII  IIIII                   
                  IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                  
                 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                  
                 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                 
                 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                 
           IIII  IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII  IIII           
          IIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIII          
          IIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIII          
          IIIIII 0110100001110100011101000111 IIIIII          
          IIIIII 0000001110100010111100101111 IIIIII          
          IIIIII 0110011101101111011011110010 IIIIII          
          IIIIII 1110011001110110110000101111 IIIIII          
          IIIIII 0110101001010000010011110100 IIIIII          
          IIIIII 100101101100IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIII          
          IIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIII          
          IIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIII          
          +IIII  IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII  IIII:          
                 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                 
                 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                 
                  IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                  
                       IIIIII    IIIIII                       
                       IIIIII    IIIIII                       
                       IIIIII    IIIIII                       
                       IIIIII    IIIIII                       
                       IIIIII    IIIIII                       
                       IIIII,    IIIIII                       
                         I:        ~I

Take a look at the 1s and 0s in the middle of the Android! Go ahead and decipher it, that gives you http://goo.gl/jPOIl. In the web site you will find a puzzle and you are supposed to be solving it in 45 seconds!

Solution? It changes every time you try to solve it, in my 2nd time solution it is ESISNXU Go ahead and try...



That was clever :)

As a side note, we may see an improved UI in the Google sites! Now it's time, don't you think?

WP7 from Microsoft

Windows Phone 7 is here in US (released on 8 Nov 2010/Mon, almost a week now!) I've seen a few models from different service providers, and they all look nice and sleek.

My favorites are:
* Dell Venue Pro (4.1 inch) with vertical slider, surprisingly very nice phone from Dell! Love the AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode) screen. Good size and feels right at hand.
* HTC HD7 (4.3 inch), cool, I like the kickstand, so you can watch movies hand free.
* Samsung Focus with AMOLED, very lightweight
* HTC Surround

All phones have the $199 price tag, not bad with 2 year contract which is pretty much the standard in recent years as you know.

All has mandatory requirements from Microsoft, like 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 5 MPixel camera, and 480x800 screen resolution. These enforced standards make it easy for developers to develop applications for the mobile devices.

Last but not least, I got an LG phone as a developer from Microsoft last month (13 October 2010). It is a nice phone too, although screen size is small compared to Dell's, HTC's, and Samsung's phones! All phones feel like performing very smoothly. So far, I've developed 3 apps, you can find them here: http://bit.ly/wp7-20101114 So, tell me what you think! Almost all my apps dedicated to my son :) Most are simple, but in the near future more interesting and challenging apps will show up in the app stores!

Good start for the first week, and the very first version of the OS. I bet it will be much more improving with the following updates from MS.

Sparrow Framework for iOS

Yesterday I stumbled upon a very promising framework for iOS devices (iPhone|iPod Touch|iPad).
Very elegantly designed, if you know Flash, Java, and/or C# you may feel very comfortable with it. Of course, one still needs to understand the Objective-C no matter what!

I like it a lot, I will play with it more and give updates accordingly!

Here is the ULR: http://www.sparrow-framework.org/

iPad

OK, got my iPad almost a month ago (29 July 2010/Thr), looks really nice and I like it a lot :) Time to think about the apps that can be developed and deployed on it.

Of Flowcharts and Social Networks!

Hmm, sounds about right :)


Source: Wired Magazine. http://www.wired.com/magazine/wp-content/images/18-05/st_askflowchart_f.jpg