Google Photos show up in Blogger’s photos UI under “From your phone” regardless of source. Probably. Or at least when I use my tablet.
Chrome Unboxed: Google Assistant Could Arrive On All Chromebooks In Late Summer.
For the most part I’ve been done with Google Assistant, and lax in using such tools. But I wouldn’t mind seeing them in more places as an option.
My relationship with voice tools tend to take two forms: pressing the microphone button on my phone and sighing at Google’s failures to handle my reminders and pressing the microphone button on my remote and asking Alexa to launch something I want to resume watching on Fire TV.
It’s nice to have options even if most of the options have failings.
Even my desktop is able to use Alexa and Cortana without much effort; Google Assistant not so much. But of course none really do that much that I find useful in that machine.
Rumblings of fhe Future
I find it curious. The last time I updated this blog was noting my journal would be moving to Google+.
With Google giving G+ the Swift kick, one of the things I’ve had on my mind of late is whether or not I would start using this place again or go all in on Diaspora. I suppose that only time will tell tell.
I have decided to in fact move my journal to Google Plus. I can be found HERE Those using RSS should be minimally impacted.
The address blog.spidey01.com may at sometime be made to link to a custom setup that pretty prints my Google Plus data via API, and perhaps other stuffs. As a side effect of the move over to Google Plus, this means those relying on my RSS news feed should review their feed next week. If you are using RSS, there should be no problem but if in doubt insure your reader is pointing directly to my feedburner.
Sometime after adapting Blogger, I had set things up with Feed Burner. My RSS feed via feed burner for this blog is here. Thus Blogger is setup to redirect spidey01.blogspot.com feed stuff to this address. Making it an alias of the feed burner. I assume that I should be able to keep this and point my feed burner to a new feed, completing the daisy chain. Soon I will try updating my feed burner to point through GPlusRSS pluss to my Google Plus entries. EDIT: Had an issue with GPlusRSS so I’ve used pluss—and the feed is active on feed burner!
Those who rely on my RSS feed being re-syndicated on my Facebook and Twitter accounts should see business as usual with the exception that it will direct you to Google Plus rather than Blogger, and it still stands that you’ll be silently ignored if you comment via Facebook instead of clicking through the link. This is an advantage of dereferencing the pointer’s in the right sequence lol.
Content that isn’t suitable for G+ will likely reside in cloud storage and be attached to the entry. This is actually an evolution, because in the past, I’ve usually made a document in text or an HTML’able markup in my ~/Documents/, and then posted it to Live Journal/Blogger as applicable. Now I won’t have to manually sync updates, hehehehehe.
Well, updates to the previous; and a little numerical data:
G+ posts since my last Blogger post: 16.
In thinking more thoroughly about the subject, G+ has one large-scale lacking: no pre-formatted code blocks. While I can live with the available formatting capabilities otherwise, ahem, I tend to post a lot of formatted examples: source code, program output, etc. A fair bit of semi-formatted output such as quotations and lyrics as well.
The simple fact remains, however that my G+ is apart of my journal.
One possible solution:
- Program blog.spidey01.com to point to a “Special” page.
- Display posts from G+ and link to the entry for commenting/etc.
- Display posts from Blogger and link to the entry for commenting/etc.
- Similar technology could be used (and maybe marketed, hehe) for Twitter/Facebook crap, if people wanted to pay or write it.
- Update spidey01.blogspot.com with a note to such effect.
- Redirect tech might even be leveragable for this, given the domain stuff already in use.
- Write a custom client for updating Blogger, with an automated reshare to G+ or a demon that auto-shares my blog posts.
That would achieve the same end goal, more or less.
Contemplating mutiny from Amazon to Google
Back in August, I rambled a bit about my thoughts on electronic books. Later on I acquired an Android tablet; about 4 x as much as a Kindle for the make/model tablet I purchased, but a hell of a lot more useful than a kindle or my netbook.
Title | Amazon Kindle Price | Google Play Price | List Price @Amazon | Amazon Availability | Google Availability |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Real-Time Rendering | $58.28 | $69.42 | $89.00 | PC, Mac, iPad | Web, iOS, Android, eReader |
OpenGL SuperBible: Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference | $28.59 | $37.67 | $59.99 | Kindle, iOS, Android, Blackberry, PC, Mac | Web, iOS, Android, eReader |
Essential Mathematics for Games and Interactive Applications, Second Edition: A Programmer’s Guide | N/A | $47.36 | $59.95 | N/A | Web, iOS, Android, eReader |
3D Game Engine Design: A Practical Approach To Real-Time Computer Graphics | N/A | $66.36 | $82.95 | N/A | Web, iOS, Android, eReader |
Linux Kernel Development | $17.69 | $31.19 | $39.99 | PC* | Web, iOS, Android, eReader |
Understanding The Linux Kernel | $29.79 | $37.67 | $59.99 | PC* | Web, iOS, Android, eReader |
My summery of Android versions
- 1.0.
- September of 2008.
- 1.1.
- February of 2009.
- General software refinements, which I’ll usually omit below.
- 1.5 Cupcake.
- April of 2009.
- Third party (custom) keyboards are now possible.
- We got widgets!
- Bluetooth A2DP and AVRCP profiles (think stereo).
- 1.6 Donut.
- September 2009.
- Voice I/O.
- Voice input (Speach to Text).
- Multi-lingual voice output (Text to Speech)
- Apps can make their data available to search results.
- Better support for gestures.
- 2.0 – 2.1 Eclair.
- 2.0 in October of 2009, 2.0.1 in December of 2009, and 2.1 in January of 2010.
- Support for multiple accounts in sync.
- Exchange account support for email.
- Camera app sucks much less.
- 2.2 – 2.2.3 Froyo.
- 2.2 in May of 2010, 2.2.1 and 2.2. in January of 2011, 2.2.3 in November of 2011.
- Dalvik VM gains Just In Time (JIT) compilation.
- Exchange support becomes USEFUL.
- USB and WiFi tethering. (Use your phone as a bridge between your laptop and your data plan.)
- Now have the option to DISABLE mobile data.
- Apps can now be installed to external memory (e.g. MicroSD card).
- 2.3 – 2.3.7 Gingerbread.
- 2.3 in December of 2010, 2.3.3 in February of 2011, 2.3.4 in ???, 2.5 in July of 2011, 2.3.6 in September of 2011, and 2.3.7 in ???.
- Native support for SIP VoIP.
- Selecting text to cut/copy/paste actually works.
- Text input cursor can now be precisely positioned.
- Ext4 replaces YAFFS(2) as standard file system.
- Native support for more sensors; gyroscopes, barometers, etc.
- NFC support.
- 3.0 – 3.2.2 Honeycomb
- 3.0 in February of 2011, 3.1 in May of 2011, 3.2 in July of 2011, 3.2.1 in September of 2011, 3.2.2 in August of 2011.
- Notification bar moved from top of screen to bottom corner.
- On screen software buttons (back, home, multi-task, menu, …) and the action bar.
- View of recent apps can be snap shots (multi-task button) or existing icon view (long press physical home button).
- Browser UI becomes more like Google Chrome.
- Browser can now sync bookmarks with Google Chrome.
- Apps are now commonly multi-pane, e.g. message list and message body on one screen.
- More hardware acceleration.
- Support for multi-core CPUs.
- Encrypting user data.
- USB devices now work as expected, e.g. flash drives, game pads.
- Proper support for Bluetooth keyboards, gamepads, etc.
- Stock launcher now allows widgets to be resized.
- WiFi performance can be maintained when screen is off (WiFi locking).
- Apps designed for small screens can be zoomed or stretched to fit.
- this Android 2.2 feature is a really good thing and makes many reviewer’s complaints about Honeycomb less of a big deal for normal people.
- Screenshots (or was this just a TF101 thang?).
- Previously required a custom ROM like Cyanogen Mod.
- Pasting integrated with 2.3.x selection UI.
- 4.0.1 – Ice Cream Sandwich.
- 4.0.1 in October of 2011, 4.0.2 in November of 2011, 4.0.3 in December of 2011.
- Small screens get traditional (1.0-2.3.x) UI, large screens get tablet style (3.x) UI from Honeycomb.
- On screen software buttons (from 3.x) now work on phones.
- Stock launcher catches up to common features of custom launchers.
- Access apps from lock screen.
- Previously required custom ROM/UI (e.g. Sense; Cyanogen Mod).
- Unlock your phone by taking a picture of your face.
- New Roboto font.
- Can now monitor data usage without requiring third party apps (or custom ROMs).
- Camera app sucks less.
- Basic photo-editing.
- Much stronger NFC integration, alternative to Bluetooth data transfer.
- Yet more work on hardware acceleration.
- WiFi Direct, a form of Ad-hoc WiFi networking and bridging.
In the future, journal entries should now be syndicated via RSS, Facebook, and Twitter. Commentators using Facebook rather than Blogger, will be LARTed.
When Google+ integrates better with Blogger, we’ll see what happens, hehe. It is rapidly becoming my preferred media but Blogger is better suited for longer stuff. Give us more API Googlers, more API!
Google just made my day
Was trying to look up a word I had stumbled across too far ago to remember, so I typed the definition into Google in the hopes of finding a clue to it. I didn’t expect my chuckle of the day!
How Google shapes history |
I seriously hope that is some Google Engineer’s idea of a joke about sex shaping history…..lol
This is from a real screen shot, not a photoshop!
Clear mailboxes ftw!
You know, after so many years of watching space usage rise, it’s so odd to be down to ~150MB of email, coming from well over 2GB lol.
I am currently using 148 MB (1%) of my 7451 MB.