Google I\O 2015 Keynote

It’s 4:45AM in the morning. I am still in night shift mode in my long weekend. I had ordered July month Digit and got it yesterday. It has the 2 hour key note of Google I\O 2015 in its DVD, one of the major reasons I ordered the July issue.

I have massive respect from Google since long time. If you read my ‘Technology’ label posts here, you could easily infer the same. I have read The Google Story, and got really impressed by their ideology and values. I\O 2015 keynote started by a note from the VP of Sales, who unsurprisingly is an NRI, key takeaways were there are currently 4000 different Android mobile models in the world, 8 out of 10 mobile phones shipped last year were Android, and another very impressive thing which we take for granted is Google is same for everyone. A student in rural India and a professor in MIT USA can both search google search engine and get the same results. Another highlight was there are 1 billion plus users each of 6 top Google products currently, really impressive all this!

Second note was on the Android M Developer Preview. M is the next major Android version (after the current L implying lollypop). There are not going to be major UI changes this time around, they have rather focused on removing maximum bugs and making it as clean as possible. There are 6 main areas of focus in M. First is App Permissions. Now permissions won’t’ be asked while installing, but after install when you try to access a feature like voice, permissions would be asked one time. You can also revoke or grant any permissions for the app from app settings. This is really nice feature from security point which was missing from Android. One of the experts in my hackathon prep session had highlighted this last year.

Second was Web Experience. They have introduced a feature called the ‘Chrome Custom Tab’. What it does is when you click on any links inside you app, it opens the link in chrome maintaining the theme of the link’s original app. The loading is very fast as the app is able to pass the information to Chrome ahead of time. The dev version of this is currently available; commercial release is Q3 this year.

Third was ‘App links’. It mainly involves linking multiple apps. This is essentially a security feature of sort, when you click on a link in one app, the android platform will verify from the server the authenticity of the link and open the link in the respective app providing security and convenience. 

Fourth feature is ‘Android Pay’. Using Android pay you can make payments using your mobiles at stores. A good step in convergence I believe. No more need to carry wallets!  Android pay is simple, secure and has choices for users. To make payment all you need to do is just unlock you phone and expose to NFC reader, simple indeed! When you add your credit card to Android pay and new account number is created, and your credit card number is not shared with the store, thus secure.  You can register for this via Google, via banks or via you carrier, so secure in that regards. Android pay will work in 700 stores to start with in US. Android pay will also be integrated for in-app purchases.

Fifth new feature is fingerprint support. Devices have been providing this since 2011 but with their own application. With M, this will be standardized across all devices, as it will be integrated in the OS. Fingerprint supports will be useful for 3 main purposes: Device Unlock, Play Store purchases and Open Authentication APIs. The last one is mainly for developers, where they can easily integrate the feature in their apps. 

Last but not the least was Power and charging. There is a new smart feature for managing power called ‘Doze’. What it will do is if there is no activity for long period of times, like say when we are sleeping, the device would go in a deeper sleep state. This will enable longer battery life, however all features like alarms and incoming messages over the net would still be active. Compared to L, M devices were tested to last 2 times longer in standby mode. For charging they have developed a new USB Type C standard. Charging would be 3 to 5 times faster, the chargers would be flippable, so you could insert it in your device socket either ways. Small, but very insightful and important change.

There are loads of other new useful features like easy word selection, floating keyboard toolbar, direct share,  Flex storage, App standby, etc.. Official release of M is in Q3 2015. And guess who would get it first? Hell yeah.. the Nexus users!!!

Next note was by David Singelton, Director of Android wear on Android wear, obvio maan! Currently there are 1500 watch faces. As of May 2015, the latest watch LG Watch Urbane also comes with new features like Wifi. Features like GPS and offline music are already there. Seems eventually this will replace mobile phone in few years’ time for basic computing, entertainment and communication.  The latest release of Android wear will have always-on feature. No need to shake wrist or push button to check time. This feature is extended to apps to integrate on home screen. Examples include a grocery list or a map will stay on the screen till you want.

Next feature is wrist gestures. This one I like especially. Flip your wrist to go through notifications. Their moto is wearable app should be glanceable, actionable and effortless. Awesome indeed. He also showed the hordes of features available in wearable devices now, those include microphone, haptic motor, accelerometer, compass, gyroscope, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, barometer, heart rate monitor, and GPS. Whao!! Dint imagine all this in a watch!! You can virtually do anything with the watch now, if you can dream it, you can build it is the message for the developers. All the code would run independently inside the watch, another big add on. Currently there are already over 4000 apps specifically for Android wear.

Next was announcement of ‘Brillo’, the operating system for IoT. Next ‘WEAVE’ a communication channel using which devices could talk to each other. Brillo would be available from Q3 2015, and WEAVE from Q4 2015. Another great feature in M is ‘Now on Tap’. This is google now going epic in NLP and smart use of 30 level neural network of Google! Just tap on the Home button anywhere, and see Google Now unlock the magic!

Next was introduction of brand new product ‘Google Photos’ by Anil, another Indian, we were in majority, hell yeah!! Lot of kool new features of sharing, searching and editing in there! Awesome indeed. Great feature is backup and store unlimited fotos and videos for free. Up to 16 Mpx for fotos and 1080p HD for videos!!Google Photos is already available.

After this there were announcements specifically for developers community on new products, and new features in existing products for developers. It was a wonderful event, I felt really inspired. The major takeaway was domination of Android in world market, and use of Android in Brillo stack, something of a major takeaway for me indeed!!

My Internet History

I remember it precisely. The year was 2001; I had just finished my 10th grade board exams, never used internet before. I went to a local cyber café for the first time, and asked them to help me setup an email id. Rediff.com was pretty popular at that time in India. I signed up, my name is Kartik Vyas, I tried for an id like kartikvyas@rediffmail.com, it was already taken, and this is a pretty common combination. I tried some more combinations, didn’t work, finally I ended up  with myhearwiillgoonkartik@rediffmail.com...it sounds pretty funny now, but I was pretty new to the internet then.

As far as technology is concerned, we had dialup internet at that time, when I first got internet at home. In the cyber café I am not sure, may be they might have had cable connection, but still it was not broadband, I am pretty sure! I used to go a lot to the cyber café, Yahoo Messenger was a big craze then, going in to public chat rooms, and then trying to start up a conversation with strangers. I think the last I remember; I had around 120 strangers in my Yahoo friends list! J

Another thing I used to do a lot was search for wallpapers of cars, and cinema celebrities, and email everyone, I was one hell of a spammer then! I used to also send e-cards to friends and relatives. I was also using email to be in touch with my long distance relatives. There was no social networking back then, no WhatsApp or Facebook.

Also I had my first desktop computer at home in 2003 before I started undergrad studies, I think it had a floppy drive, which is not seen these days! I don’t remember the configuration exactly but I guess it was Pentium 4 maybe and 256MB of RAM. Comparatively I have a DELL mini monster laptop now, it has 8GB RAM, 750GB hard disk, 1 GB inbuilt video graphics, and second gen Core i5, I got this back in 2011, and it was my second laptop.

I started my undergrad studies in Computer Engineering, and I can definitely say the initial stint with the internet had a big influence on my decision, I had curiosity to know how things work, and I wanted to learn it all. During engineering I learnt programming, I learnt RDBMS, and many other courses, I used to use internet voraciously to do research related to my courses. In my university we used to have well equipped labs, but it was only for study purpose, only faculty had internet access, and they had broadband connection.

Social networking started for me around 2006, I started using Orkut, and I remember it was exciting and a bit addictive too. In 2008 I got an invite from a friend to use facebook, compared to orkut I found facebook interface of 2008, a bit less user friendly, but then slowly facebook started gaining ground and we all know the rest!

After I graduated I got a job in a big MNC, I worked for 3 major clients. Everything was online, we were working for big clients and dealing with a lot of sensitive data, and had a lot of responsibility. There were 3 level access till I could reaches my cubicle! J

One thing I am proud of is a failed startup I had back in 2010. Cloud computing was a novelty then, I had done some research, and was planning to build a startup to provide cloud based solutions for business users. I had commodity and retail market in mind. I also had registered a domain, and designed my site from godaddy.com. It was not in India back then, and I had paid them in dollars, they had a ton of tools to work with. Everything was there, only I was still nascent and could not build a working product. Eventually I thought of trying again later when I am more prepared and more experienced.

I used to do a lot of research at that time, wrote papers about Cloud computing and SOA. The passion and curiosity I had when I started using internet in 2001, I still had it in 2010 and I still have it now. Although due to time constraints of a full time job, I cannot do much research but I try to do as much as possible, I read a few papers and saw some videos on BigData last year, I also completed a course on coursera itself of the same.

So, this is my own history of the internet! Hope you had liked it!

*I had submitted this essay as part of the Coursera IHTS course of University of Michigan. I am publishing this now as grades are declared. Please do not copy for any future sessions of this course. 

Internet in 2034

To think about the future of the Internet, let’s have a look at the past. To predict the future 20 years from now, let’s get an idea how much we have advanced in the last 20 years. So, how was the internet really in 1994? Well in the 90s the internet was becoming more and more popular; it was having a revolutionary impact on means of communication with advent of electronic mail, instant messaging, forums, blogs and social networking. All these things are still pretty much there, however they have now become a basic necessity in everyday personal and professional life. Something which was a fantast or a novelty 20 years back has now become an integrated part of our lives.

Another major difference in the last 20 years has been the number of devices connected to the internet. Currently we have over 20 billion devices connected to the internet, which is more than 3 times the population of the whole world. This is an extra-ordinary change, and it clearly showcases the impact Internet has had on our daily lives. Also, the fact that these devices talk to each other and are super smart, has brought in a revolution with regards to convergence.

So going by all the above, it is really difficult to predict how Internet would be 20 years from now, no one would have guessed 20 years back that we would be relying and using the internet so heavily today. However, here’s my 2 cents.

First thing I believe that might happen is division of networks. Currently we have only a WWW, which is common and everyone uses it. I believe slowly we would have multiple closely coupled and independent array of networks. For eg. We would have self driving cars, so there would be an independent network infrastructure dedicated just for that particular domain. This would have to happen because going by the numbers and the exponential increase we are having currently, it would be almost impossible to have one global network which would encompass everything.

Another major revolution I see is in the medical industry and its influence on wearable devices. We already have some wearable devices in the form of Google Glass, Smart Watches, we also have a Smart Band coming up. I believe in the future, the complete health of the human body would be monitored via a wearable device, it could be as simple as a watch or a wrist band, it would be connected to the health systems web and off course it would be smart enough to ensure I am in the peak of my health all the time.

We may also see shift in the basic architecture of how the internet is accessed and used. We already ran out of IPv4 addresses last year and we are now using IPv6 addresses to accommodate the staggering number of devices connected to the internet. We also see new and new concepts like Cloud Computing, Big Data Analytics, etc coming up. All this and more could easily change the fundamental architecture of the internet in the future.

I might as well start thinking of what we saw in fiction movies like Minority Report and Robot, and there is a fair chance that reality could be that in 20 years. Science, Technology and Internet are advancing and tremendous rate, I use a Nexus 5 smart phone, and I receive OS update and application updates very frequently. Also with regards to hardware, we have 3GB of RAM now available in smart phones, with octo core processors, something we could have never imagined, same goes with the internet, how and where it would lead us is difficult to predict!

*I had submitted this essay as part of the Coursera IHTS course of University of Michigan. I am publishing this now as grades are declared. Please do not copy for any future sessions of this course. 

Google Nexus 5...

 To start with I would like to look back in time. It was 28th November, 2010, when I bought my previous phone. Samsung Wave 723, it served me very well for more than 3 years. It has been a wonderful journey, and I will always remember you for all that you have done for me. Your 5MP camera with LED flash, and the 5.1 surround sound were notably outstanding. However, all good things come to an end my friend, it's time for both of us to move on. 

 The date for the upgrade of the phone in my life was 3rd March, 2014. A big upgrade too, Google Nexus 5, the phone of the year in 2013, and I would be a proud owner of it. The moment it came in front of my eye, my happiness knew no limits, I was on cloud 10...(cloud 9 is very dreary) It was like a wonder of the world is in my hand. The first time I turned it on, it said Google and I was like WOW…I finally own the great legend, the great masterpiece of my time.

  

 I went outside and got my sim-card cut, so that it could fit in this one. Then I registered my google account with the phone….and the rest they say is history. It is a wonderful phone. Superfast, super slick and super light. You get a feeling of pride holding it. Touch screen is very responsive, loads of Android features and applications. My previous phone had bada OS, and not many apps available. Finally, I am now on WhatsApp! The camera of the phone is too good, it has 8MP primary, and 1.3 MP secondary. I clicked a few shots in office yest, they came out wonderful.

 I also got Android 4.4.2 Kitkat pre-installed.  One of the icon called “Play Games” was not opening, but then after the apps update, it is working fine now. One can anyways access all the Games from the PlayStore. I have bought the 16GB version, and I have around 12GB available, I would have been happy for anything above 10GB, and so I am.

 One thing I noticed, and it is a known fact that Android phones eat a lot of battery, on an average the battery lasts a day and a half max. However, the charging is also ultra quick, or may be because my handset is new.  Lot of security features are available, there are 5 ways to unlock the screen, we can do it using Slide, Face Unlock, Pattern, Pin and Password. Lot of other administration features also available.

 My laptop seems redundant now, the only time I would use it would be to write my blog, or type an email, everything else would be done from the phone now…

Finally, thanks a lot to my sister and jiju for the phone, I am really happy to have it and am enjoying it a lot!!

Facebook lives on...

 There is something about life, it lives on. There is something about time, it goes on, and now one might very well add, there is something about facebook, it lives on. Facebook now has 800 million strong users and is looking to come out with an IPO to generate $100 billion, which is truly an estimate of the popularity of this website.

 There was time, when I was making claims that Google plus would beat facebook before the beginning of new year 2012. Well my claims have been proven wrong. Millions of people did register for Google plus, however it is not being used that much compared to facebook.

 Another big point in the above assertions is the fact that, facebook is making constant efforts to improve itself and bring out new features. Facebook now has the facebook timeline,facebook cover photo and the subscription features to name a few. Also the new image viewer does appear descent compared to the old one.

 Today's generation is very busy and online all the time. These two factors have resulted in flourishing of social networking domains like facebook and twitter. People find friends online and stay in touch online, however for me a simple call to a friend from the humble cell phone still means more than online conversation.

 Enough about facebook and Google, India is suffering from a miserable tour down under. Had to endure a 4-0 white wash in the test series. The new Oz skipper Micheal Clarke aka Puppy, surely is enjoying captaincy. He scored a double and a triple century and was in remarkable form. India lost the first T20 game yesterday, however it was a completely new young side and they were showing notable seriousness and commitment. The reason for the loss, was that Australia was just the better of the two side on the day and hopefully India will give some descent performances now.

 There were many attacks on the star studded Indian batting line up and rumors about Dhoni been asked to give up captaincy. However, Dhoni has done a lot of good for Indian cricket, he has won every single possible tournament for the team. There are times, when team may get out of form, one must still have faith in the team and the captain. Don't forget, this is the same team which finished 2010 as number one test team, won the 2011 ODI World Cup and also has won the 2007 inagural T20 world cup, all under the leadership of Dhoni!

If I were Google...

 For people who know it, and for people who know me, know the fact what piece of crap facebook is. The question is if Google is so awesome after all, how come it's not yanking facebook left, right and center? Why is it being so naive and not capitalizing on the chances?

 If I were Google, I would first get some really smart marketing people who are creative and know the know of technology too. Like, cmon look at this, facebook just dished out another piece of trashed features, which is so fucking horrible that I don't feel like loging into the website anymore. If I were Google, I would take note of that, and may be I am, and may be I am waiting patiently for facebook to freak out and come out with more of such crap, untill it self destructs! May be, just might be!

 The other thing I love about Google is the amount of things they offer for free, their open source filospfy and their non commercial, problem oriented outlook. But if I were Google...I would have not shut down Google Wave, and if I would have done that, I would work on it and I would come up with a new avataar of it, may be integrate it with Google plus? May be Integrate it with all the other Google products? May be...just might be!

 If I were Google , I would think of getting into the domain of networking and cloud computing more deeply and with  more aggression. Going by the notion of private Internets to take shape in near future, I would be aware of the awesome features I already have set up for the users in it, well then again the question is May be....or Might be?

After all we are talking Google here! \m/

Why facebook should start counting their days!

 No doubt facebook is an awesome piece of thing. The number of users it has is frustratingly unimaginable. It is unbelievably unconceivable that at the end of the day it is just a website. With regards to evolution of internet, it is technically one step back and it reminds of the days before google search engine when people used to use just one website to do lotta stuff...so dats not good actually!

 Facebook has been buggy and a hell a lot too! Before Google plus was launched, the contents of the wall used to be misplaced, and you can’t really blame your browser for that as the presentation layer and the application layer is not that intelligent, hell it's not at all intelligent. So basically, the facebook servers were not giving proper header information back to us I guess...

 Then came their image viewer...and it was like LMFAO! It was horrible and they took long long time to finally upgrade it to something decent, but still the new sucker has lots of semantic bugs and logical bugs. Try to read any notification or chat while viewing an image in fb viewer...can't do that maan! Compare that with google plus, I just replied to a comment and that too on my friends stream, without even opening google plus in the browser, now that's what I call evolution!

 After the advent of Google plus and all the buzz around it, somehow all the application layer bugs got fixed...well they had too, din't they...lol Then there was the big day, facebook integrating with skype...wow that's awesome. But then again I was attending the webcast of that lunch and the same problem as with the image viewer...can you really multi-task on the same browser tab while doing a video chat???

 Also the new interface of facebook has 3 things to do on the wall instead of 4, namely update status, ask question and add photo. Now try to do this, try to upload a photo. Select a file from your local machine and then stop. Now if you decide that, hey I don't want to upload this pic or any other pic...WHERE THE HELL IS THE CANCEL BUTTON? C'mon facebook guys, such a single thing missed your interface!! :P One of the few workarounds would be clicking on home or facebook, but that sucks if you consider from the point of view of software designing and engineering....and especially for someone of the might of facebook which is worth billions of dollars??? what type of developers do they have??? really!!!

Another fact if you consider Google plus in this regard or even google company as a whole. They never release products out of beta till it's perfect. How many times did u actually encounter a problem with the Google search engine or your gmail? Do you know that Google plus is actually called a project still and they are going systematically one step at a time, while maintaining super sleek interfaces, providing 100% availability and a perfect piece of design from the software engineering perspective!

 Well this is all for now, I have a blog on Google blogspot, but somehow felt it exciting to bajao facebook on facebook…hehe and it is really ugly actually that such simple bugs are so easily visible on a website with 700 million users and worth 50 billion dollars?? You gotta be kidding me!!!                             


~Kartik Vyas~


Note: Please don't reuse the content without permission!!!

It's Facebook v\s Google now...but still on Microsoft Windows

 Not more than a year ago, it was Google everywhere. Google was the thing, I even had a post in this blog about Microsoft v/s Google . Now it's all facebook...so much that the power of one website is challenging the dominance of a search engine, email, online docs..and much more which google offers. Facebook is so popular...and how? more than 500 million users and a net worth of 25 billion dollars..that's how!

  Google is catching up now. So much that, it offered one of it's employees ESOPS worth 1.5 million dollars to decline an offer to join FB. What's more...this year facebook hired a guy from IIT Kharagpur with an offer of 70 lakhs per annum (Rs) and also unconfirmed news about ESOPS worth Rs. 1.7 crores...

 When google was hot...I mean b4 FB cooled it down...people saw Google as the future. Why not...this is the era of the internet and google have everything it should to be the numero uno.

  And then...there is Microsoft. We all think that Microsoft is down and out because it is not much in the news as FB or Google..but hello do you realise that still more than 90% of the people in this world use Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. Google and FB are online, people do use them but they go online using Windows and Internet Explorer....it's a win win for Microsoft...more you use FB,  you are using IE!

 Google is trying it's best to dethrone Microsoft. The search engine was such hit that Microsoft would have had nightmares...damn they would have had sleepless nights...the disaster of Vista would not have helped either...however Windows 7 has been a saviour for Microsoft.

 Those who have descent knowledge about it, Google Chrome is definetly a better browser than internet explorer...way better...so much that currently it is the best browser available. What about OS? Google's Android OS is destined to be the most used OS in smart phones by 2013...currently it's Symbian thanks to Nokia's legacy..but Google certainly has another up on Microsoft with regards to Mobile Computing.

 Google designed an OS around it's popular browser Chrome..called Google Chrome OS...just like the browser it is a stripped down OS which is fast and has a completely different architecture and they say it is foolproof against viruses, trojans and worms. The question shoud be, why does google has two OS? Especially when we can get netbooks with Android as well. Sergey Brin..one of the cofounder has to say they want an internal competition and ultimately take the positives out of both and build an ultimate OS which would power all....Desktops, laptops, netbooks, mobiles and tablets. Saying is one thing but beating Microsoft and the over 90% users addicted to Windows since last two decades...is another.

Microsoft vs Google

The biggest experiment in the history of mankind has started ,and nothing is gonna happen to us or the universe because of it, it will only bring useful results to solve several mysteries about the universe and its origin.

Well today I would like to talk about two big software companies of my time Microsoft and Google. Google is a fairly new company founded in 1995 but has grown ever since. It has the famous search engine, gmail, orkut, blogger, google health and many other things. It is very popular name and has become number one company in IT industry.

Microsoft ,on the other hand was founded in 1975. In 1983 Microsoft announced the development of Windows, a graphical user interface (GUI) for its own operating system (MS-DOS) that had shipped for IBM PC and compatible computers since 1981. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates made a fortune out of this company and was the richest man in the world for quiet a while.

Microsoft had many competitors ,one of them was netscape, netscape had developed a browser netscape navigator , which became very popular until micorsoft started shipping IE with its operating system , Google has recently launced a beta version of its browser chrome.

With linux and open source gaining popularity and Bill Gates resigning, and perhaps many other reasons have made google ,the numero uno now.