Stop #StopSOPA and #WikipediaBlackOut

Wikipedia has initiated the #WikipediaBlackOut to support the anti-SOPA campaign thing. Sure, I support it too, but if you still want to see Wikipedia, use this bookmarklet code.

Add a new bookmarklet entry and paste the following code into it. It should work fine with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

javascript:(function(){$('body>div').toggle();})();

And support #StopSOPA

I’ve put this up on GitHub – download the HTML from there easily: https://gist.github.com/1631955

Update: Even shorter now, thanks to @BlurSpline

HTC phone names sound like condoms

Most Android phones have ridiculous names, led by masterpieces such as Samsung’s Epic Touch 4G and Captivate Glide, but HTC phone names are actually more interesting because they’re just perfect for condoms as well. Just think about it. I’ve even taken the liberty to come up with taglines for some:

• HTC Desire: You know you want me.
• HTC Titan: When size matters.
• HTC Hero: A hero comes along… with the strength to carry on…
• HTC HD mini: When size doesn’t matter.
• HTC Salsa: Spice it up!
• HTC Incredible: When words fail you.
• HTC Sensation XL: When feeling and size both matter.
• HTC Legend: Legen… wait for it…
• HTC Freestyle: Anyhow, anywhere!
• HTC Jetstream: Faster than a rocket!
• HTC Wildfire: Spreads all over…
• HTC Trophy: Take it home when you’re done!

Runners up:

• HTC Dream
• HTC Explorer
• HTC Flyer
• HTC Magic
• HTC Passion (aka Google Nexus One)
• HTC Radar

Think you can do better? Try your hand at these (pun intended): http://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?sName=HTC

Feel free to tweet these out, but do tag them with #HTCCondoms, so it’s easier to collect all of them.

And remember, kids, always play it safe. Always use a well-fitting, shock-absorbing, protective rubber case for your phone. What did you think I was talking about?

Delete Your Tweets For Good with TwitWipe

My app, TwitWipe, has made it to Mashable! Check out wat Erik Shute thinks are good reasons to want to wipe your tweets, complete with recommendations to celebrities!

Google Chrome developer edition standalone installer, because I never fucking find it quickly online when I reinstall Windows

Google Chrome developer edition standalone installer (Windows)

I’m probably going to get this URL tattooed on my forearm, in case this blog goes down and I have to try and find the link again.

List of Indian States with Geocodes

I needed geocodes of all Indian states for an app which I was working on. I couldn’t find it on the first page of a Google search result, so I sat down and made my own list.

Here you go:

State	Geocode
Andhra Pradesh	17.047762,80.098187
Arunachal Pradesh	28.239099,94.069545
Assam	26.200604,92.937574
Bihar	25.198009,85.521896
Chhattisgarh	21.278657,81.866144
Goa	15.425379,73.983003
Gujarat	22.258652,71.19238
Haryana	32.10119,77.563477
Himachal Pradesh	34.152727,76.827393
Jammu & Kashmir	34.152727,76.827393
Jharkhand	23.610181,85.279935
Karnataka	15.317278,75.713888
Kerala	13.060422,80.249583
Madhya Pradesh	19.746024,75.717773
Maharashtra	19.746024,75.717773
Manipur	25.468074,91.367798
Meghalaya	25.468074,91.367798
Mizoram	23.164543,92.937574
Nagaland	26.158435,94.562443
Orissa	20.951666,85.098524
Punjab	27.019984,74.223633
Rajasthan	27.019984,74.223633
Sikkim	27.532972,88.512218
Tamil Nadu	11.127122,78.656894
Tripura	23.940848,91.988153
Uttar Pradesh	27.570589,80.098187
Uttarakhand	30.066753,79.0193
West Bengal	22.986757,87.854976

Note: I’m making no claims to the accuracy of this information. If you send a rocket to one of these numbers and it lands in the wrong state, don’t send another one to my Foursquare check-in location.

A Complete List of My Phones

I don’t just have four phones on the major platforms. Here is a full list:

1. iPhone
2. BlackBerry Bold 9700
3. Samsung Focus
4. Nexus S
5. Samsung Galaxy i7500
6. BlackBerry Pearl 8100
7. BlackBerry Charm 7100g
8. Samsung C180
9. Samsung E880
10. Samsung U600
11. Samsung E840

I’m sure I’m missing some. I’ll see what’s in the cupboard on the weekend and update this post.

Samsung Focus SGH-i917

This review is a work in progress. I just got the phone a couple of days ago, so I’m gonna jot down points till I can find time to write something more bloggy.

Feel

The Focus is very thin, light and feels great to hold in the hand. It slides in and out of your jeans pockets smoothly. It’s not abnormally big like the Galaxy S II, so you don’t feel like you’re holding up a mousetrap next to your ear. The tapering, sloped edges on the rear don’t make it look like a boring block either.

Display

Fabulous colors, bright, crisp. Very readable in sunlight. The UI is beautiful and the display does justice to it and vice versa. However, it seems like this is just regular monkey display and not Gorilla glass, because I’ve managed to get a scratch on the screen in two days of use.

Windows Phone 7

Amazing, pleasant user interface. I like how all apps have to use the Metro UI and hence allow the experience to be consistent across everything. However, the UI is absolute, minimalist design, so you’ll find that the actions available in any app are extremely limited.

Update: The phone came with the original software, which I upgraded to NoDo and finally to Mango. Integration of social networks has been extended with Twitter and LinkedIn support and the whole social experience lives inside the “Me” tile, complete with Facebook Like notifications, Twitter @ mentions and the ability to reply. This almost makes it redundant to use the Facebook and Twitter apps, unless you’re looking at something specific such as direct messaging and lists. Mango is awesome!

Apps

I’ve only used Twitter, Facebook and IM+ yet, and they all work as expected. More on this later. And yeah, the Marketplace works fine for me because my Live id address is somewhere in the US. There’s no Windows 8 ‘charm’ like functionality, so I can’t take a picture from the camera and share it using a third-party app such as Twitter or Facebook.

Update: Just installed a fuckload of free apps from the Marketplace. The process of installing apps is much faster than it is on Android or iOS. Editing this from the WordPress app!

Update: There are loads of apps. A lot of them are very feature rich, such as RunKeeper, which also offers a live tile with weekly/monthly stats. However, it doesn’t seem to support multitasking even on Mango.

Sound and Music

The Focus speaker is amazingly clear and sufficiently loud. All of my electronic music sounds fantastic on the speaker as well as my Klipsch Image S2s.

The music player seems to do everything from browsing artists, albums and all the usual stuff, but the biggest fuck up is that it ignores disc numbers stored using iTunes, so all my 2CD compilations (which make up for 80% of my music collection) alternate between tracks on either CD. This is the worst problem I’ve encountered in WP7 yet. I doubt Microsoft is working on a fix for this, so I’m going to have to listen to single CD albums only. Even BlackBerry supports multi-disc albums!

Camera

This has the same-ish 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with LED light as the Nexus S, but for some reason, this one is shit. Even with anti-shake enabled, it can’t focus right. Yes, the camera on the Samsung Focus can’t fucking focus right.

Network

Great sound quality, but very poor reception. I’m unreachable most of the time because the phone can’t get a signal. The iPhone 2G can get a decent signal on the same SIM. When there’s a signal, however, the internet browsing is pretty fast. It’s too bad there’s no switch to turn off 3G, because it’s fucking eating up my prepaid balance, man.

Internet and e-mail:

I feel ridiculous saying this, but the Internet Explorer experience on this phone is way better than using the Android Browser on my Nexus S. Gmail works out-of-the-box and even supports labels (as folders), but no search. Android’s Gmail experience remains numero uno.

Hardware

The Focus hardware is almost identical to the Nexus S, but WP7 seems to run more smoothly on the Focus than Android on the Nexus S. There’s practically no lag and the touch response is excessively smooth.

Verdict

I picked this up on eBay for Rs. 13,290. It’s a US AT&T piece unlocked for use anywhere. At this price, I think it’s a steal. Samsung has no Windows Phone 7 handsets in India, so the closest competition is the HTC Mozart, which sells for around Rs. 16,000. It’s got a better 8 megapixel camera, but the Focus screen is 4″. And I hate HTC, so even if they sell the Mozart for Rs. 8,000, I still won’t buy or recommend it.

More to come…

Skip that fucking intro!

There are still too many websites with Flash intros and a ‘skip intro’ link out there – mostly thanks to anal clients and/or web developers who missed the cool bus. If you’ve chanced upon one too many of these websites, the Skip Intro extension for Google Chrome will come in handy. It will automatically click the ‘Skip Intro’ link when found on such a website BEFORE loading the intro, so you won’t even realise there was one.

Awesome indeed.

Warning: This is the first release, version 0.1. It’s might not skip each and every intro and it might actually go ahead and skip something you actually wanted to watch. If this happens, please find me on Twitter or email me or leave a comment out here and I’ll look into it.

Update (3/8/11): Skip Intro now has it’s own little website! Don’t skip it!

Visit: Skip Intro Extension

Link your Twitter contacts to your BlackBerry contacts

BlackBerrys have this nice feature that lets you link your main address book contact cards with the person’s presence in other apps, such as Facebook or LinkedIn. This is nice because simply viewing the person’s contact card will then give you an overview of your conversations with that person across networks. You’ll see emails from them, texts, calls, Facebook or LinkedIn messages. It’s been four years, but not a single Twitter application has let you link contacts like this – not even the official Twitter app. However, an update was released for Twitter for BlackBerry a few days ago (2.0.0.16), which FINALLY lets you do this!

To link contacts, simply open Twitter and…

1. Click on the user’s tweet to go to their profile page (You should see their bio, location etc. at the end of that page – that’s how you know you’re there).
2. Then click  (the BB/Menu button) and choose ‘Link to BlackBerry Contact’.
3. From the displayed contacts list, pick the contact card that belongs to the Twitter user you’re linking.

Typically, you’ll only want to link tweeps that are already in your contact list. If not, you’ll have to add a new contact when you’re doing the above and then go on adding more info (phone number, email etc.).

If everything’s in order, viewing that person’s BlackBerry contact card will show you tweets from that user, alongwith calls, texts and whatever else you’ve linked them to.

Simplified Final Cut Pro X FAQ

I got bored half way through the Final Cut Pro X FAQ posted by Apple because I thought it was too verbose. If you want to save time reading (and perhaps spend it on editing instead?), check out my ‘simplified’ version below:

Final Cut Pro X is a breakthrough in nonlinear video editing.

Import

Can I import projects from Final Cut Pro 7 into Final Cut Pro X?
No.

Can I import my video directly into Final Cut Pro X as I could in Final Cut Pro 7?
Yes.

Editing

Can I edit my tape-based workflow with Final Cut Pro X?
Yes, in a limited manner.

Does Final Cut Pro X support multicam editing?
Not yet, but it will.

Does Final Cut Pro X support external monitors?
Yes.

Can I save different versions of my project?
Yes.

Are keyboard shortcuts in Final Cut Pro X different from those in Final Cut Pro 7?
Some.

Can I use my third-party plug-ins in Final Cut Pro X?
As soon as they are updated.

Media Management

Can I specify a scratch disk location?
Yes.

Can I share projects with other editors?
Yes.

Can I store media in locations other than my system drive?
Yes.

Can I hide Events that I am not working on?
Yes.

Export

Can Final Cut Pro X export XML?
Not yet.

Does Final Cut Pro X support OMF, AAF, and EDLs?
Not yet.

Can I send my project to a sound editing application such as Pro Tools?
Yes.

Does Final Cut Pro X allow you to assign audio tracks for export?
Not yet. An update this summer will.

Can I customize my export settings?
Yes.

Purchase

Can I purchase a volume license?
Soon.