Chromecast does not directly play the local media on your phone/tablet (yet)

There is a common misconception that chromecast can display the content that you have on your tablet or phone. Google made it look so seamless that people think so. It cannot display the media (photos, video) in your phone or tablet. But don't get disheartened yet, there are some hacks to work around the limitation.

The basic thing to understand is that when you choose to play a video (youtube, netflix), your phone/tablet will share the URL with the chromecast device. Chromecast will connect to your wifi router directly and get the content from the internet. There is more than this to make to look seamless. You can control the playback of the video from your device. To achieve this all your device has to do is to share the playback control information to the chromecast device and it will apply those controls on the content that it got from the web.

I think there is a good reason behind this. If it has to playback the media directly from your personal device, your personal device should have very good bandwidth capabilities to have a good video quality. Good video quality is important because the display will be on a large screen. Not all personal devices have this good bandwidth to stream local media.

I am guessing that google wants to give a good first-time-experience albeit with limited functionality. I think there will be a big demand from the users to be able to play the media on their phone/tablet. They may be willing to loose some video quality. Google may bring this feature down the line.

Different models of HTC One X

If you are planning to buy HTC One X, know what exactly you are buying. I was about to finalize on HTC One X and realized that there are different models with different hardware configruations under the same name. I wish you are reading this blog before buying one so that you can avoid unplesant shock. If you are reading this late, my condolences are with you.

I feel frustrated to see HTC selling different hardware configurations under the same phone name, in this case, HTC One X. In USA, HTC One X has a dual-core processor whereas the international version is quad-core. The US version has LTE but not the international version. The CPU, GPU, storage are different.

It is common that the frequencies are different for the same phone (same name) in different regions. For e.g In HTC desire, the 3G frequency is 900/2100 in India while this is 850/1900 in USA. So, even if your phone is a quad band phone, it may not get 3G in all networks. You will get calls though as "quad-band" indicates only to the voice section of GSM. The frequencies may be different for different providers in the same region. For e.g. AT&T vs T-Mobile uses different 3G frequencies (850/1900 vs 1900,1700/2100).

I dont understand the reasoning behind this by HTC. Imagine the poor souls who saw quad-core specs and bought the phone in USA. I am not making this up. There are comments in amazon product reviews saying that they were expecting a quad-core phone but got a dual-core (Thanks to this guy. I can say that my confusion started with that comment which saved me). See the table in the wikipedia article which nicely shows the differences.

Offtopic... I was curious to know the naming convention of HTC phones. They have their models suffixed X, S, V etc. It was not easy to find but I finally found one link which explained it. X-Extreme, S-Sense, V-Value, XL-Extreme with LTE.

One thumb typing keyboard for mobile from microsoft

When the first keyboards were invented we used to sit infront of the devices and type them. So, a horizontal layout would make sense that way. Over time we realized that it is not so good from an ergonomics point of view and split keyboard claim to be easy on the nerves. But all this is when the typing keyboard is based on a platform.

Imagine typing on the same keyboard while we are holding that keyboard. I sounds so stupid. right ? Right, but we sticked to the same idea for too long. We hold our mobiles in hand and try to follow the same layout. To top it we hold the mobile in one hand. So, whats the solution when you are holding the keyboard itself.

I think the split keyboard in ipad is a good idea to start with. We generally hold it in both the hands and splitting the keyboard closer to the grip area is a good idea because we can type without loosing the grip. But still the keyboard is vertical. Will it not be hard on the nerves ?

I think microsoft nailed it this time. They have a curved keyboard with which we can easily type all the keys without loosing the grip. I belive that this model will be easy on the nerves too. This may not be a game changer to make people go crazy and make them buy windows phones. But it definitely is a good idea. When will everyone copy this idea and start a patent war on this (tounge-in-cheek) ?
http://wmpoweruser.com/new-arc-soft-keyboard-may-be-coming-to-windows-phone-8/

HCI (Human Computer Interface) more than simple touch

This is touche in development at disney research. This interface can detect not just simple finger touch but complex gestures using hands and other parts of the body. It claims to have 99% accuracy in detecting a gesture. It is based on something called "Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing" (SFCS) technique. The difference of this technique, in simple terms, is that this technique samples a wide range of frequencies related to the gesture than a single frequency which gives a binary result YES/NO. i.e. touched or not touched. In the SFCS technique, they can detech different types of touch. It can tell if it is just touch, pinch, grasp, etc. All difference gestures are demonstrated in the following video along with the freqency graph for each type of touch.

 

With this SFCS technique, they can detect multiple aspects of the user using the device. It can detect how the user is touching the sensor, how the user is connected to the ground, and some properties of the individual body. One reason why they say that this kind of research was not done before is due to the lack of fast and inexpensive micro processors. This technique is computationally intensive and it has to analyze hundreds of data points.

Source:
http://www.slashgear.com/disney-research-works-on-touche-touch-control-using-body-parts-07226425/
http://www.disneyresearch.com/research/projects/hci_touche_drp.htm

Ipad 3: no siri

Apple seems to have repeated itself. After raising the expections of the people a lot and creating a lot of marketing hype, I am sure it disappointed a lot of people. The latest ipad, ipad3 is released without the siri application on it. Siri is one of the most wished for feature on ipad3. It has dictation instead. Oh wow!!!.

Atleast the other features packed with ipad3 are inline with the expectations. They include
- Retina display
- 5MP camera
- 4G support
- Faster processor (A5X)

So, what is special about ipad3 ? Almost nothing. To top it, the expected feature like siri is not there. So, what should you do ? Buy this ipad3 and then wait for apple to release ipad3S with siri support to make you feel like a looser unless you buy ipad3S. Apple repeats...

Try Windows phone 7 OS on Android or iphone

Ya, the post title is a little overstatement. You cannot literally install windows phone 7 OS on your android or iphone device. But you can try the basic features of it on your android or iphone/ipad device. You do not need to install the OS. You do not need to even install an app. Microsoft came up with a browser based simulator of their new OS. Just click this link in your phone to get a feel of it.

I liked the idea a lot. Its amazing. What else is a better way to give a taste of new OS to users using a different OS. I think this idea will bring down the resistence level of users to try a new OS. Traditonally approach will need the user have to buy a device to try out the OS. Or alteast try it in a store without actually buying. A different approach with much less resitance level could be to give an app which would simulate the OS. But this browser-based approach has almost no resistence from the user to try the new OS. I agree that the exposure to the functionality will be limited but atleast it gives a taste of it with just a click.

Kindle Fire's browser performance

One of the touted features of the new kindle fire is its 'silk' browser. It claims that it boosts the performance of the browser by routing the traffic through the amazon cloud where some of the pre-processing is done. Also webpage caching on the amazon cloud would improve the response times of websites. All of it looks good in theory. What about the reality ?

Anandtech.com did a indepth benchmark on the performance of the browser. The results say that browser does not live up to its claims. Talking about the good things first, the bandwidth requirements will reduce. Instead of making request to different sites and processing the raw data, the browser will make reqeust only to the amazon cloud. It will get back pre-processed data which is lean and mean. This is definitely an advantage for the mobile world as it will keep the data plan bills in check.

But what about the performance ? It does not improve a lot. In some cases, it will perform even worse. The browser has an option to turn on/off the feature of routing the web traffic via amazon cloud (accelerated page loading). On an average, it turns out that the page loads slower when the feature is on. Funny!. Hopefully amazon will improve this down the line.

Now let us put an evil hat. Do you smell some conspiracy ?. Why would amazon go through such a task of routing you web traffic via its cloud ? Just because amazon loves you so much and cares so much about your browsing speed ? May be it does. But will it do this for free ? May be not. So, what is their incentive ? If you did not guess it yet, its all your browsing data. Now, amazon knows what sites you browse and your likes/dislikes. It knows you!.