Text messages Time Issue

I have been using FIDO for almost a year. Earlier, I was using it with Nokia N97 mini and recently I got HTC Desire. FIDO/Rogers and I guess T-Mobile as well, have an issue in which incoming messages are 4 hours behind from the given time. If you are not using threaded view SMS then this would not be an issue but if you are using iOS/Andriod then you will not be able to see threaded conversation.

The incoming messages will pile up on top of the screen and your outgoing messages will stack up at the bottom of the screen. It will get worst when you have 20-30+ text messages.

Few people suggested to adjust the time zone to GMT 0 and the issue would be resolved. But this will mess up with your calendar entries. An easies solution that I found is to use the SMS Time Fix for Andriod. After installation, set the application to add +4:00 hours to incoming messages in order to adjust the time and your conversation will be visible in threaded view.

Google Chrome OS

Way back, I posted series of articles (article 1, article 2) about the future of OS and now Google is about to take it’s initial steps towards it. The news isn’t surprising for me since the hype of Google OS was in market from quite a while.

As stated on Google blog, Google is redefining the concepts of OS. Their focus is “Speed, simplicity and security”. One of the thing that really got my attention is that Google isn’t focusing on some high-end hi-fi kind OS. Their “initial” focus is to provide a platform which should be secure and simple enough to help the user to leverage from web applications. Google had made this point quite clear in post

All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

This does make sense, since there are almost every kind of applications available on internet now, all you need is web browser and a decent internet connection. Google knows that it’s time for RIA and Google is providing almost every possible medium to make as much as user friendly and accessible.

Knol – Google Contender for WikiPedia

It seems as if Google is following the same path which Microsoft did in Past. History is repeating itself but this time it’s not desktop, software or os market, this time it’s WEB and the company is Google.

Google is either buying each and everything which is making its presence on internet. Few weeks earlier, Google even bid for Digg, though the bid was not successful but Google has tried. It would not be a surprise if Google will launch its own gDigg Beta (Following Google Convetions) in near future. Anyway, Those are things that are yet to happen but now let me share with you the thing that is happening.

It’s
http://knol.google.com/k/knol

Google’s contender for WikiPedia. Since Google has always added nice things in it’s ventures and the convention is being followed over here as well. Up till now i have found 2 decent things in Knol.

• You can set the permissions who should be able to edit/write the things for particular thing.
• Every individual is allow to write his own writing for already written article and each article will be rate on the basis of author’s authenticity, history and votes by other users. For example, you might find only one page on WikiPedia on Pakistan but in Knolyou may find multiple page son Pakistan contributed by different authors and you can see which author is more authentic or whatsoever.

It is still in BETA (seems like google naming standard) let’s see when it will be officially launched.

GMail Labs – Tips & Review

Mail is setting the standards of new web mail. The light look, simple design and fast retreival has made other mail boxes to re-design their architecure, look and feel. Now, GMail has added new functionality to it; GMail Labs. The little widgets has added to the functionality of GMail making it even better but right now I am going to write “things that are missing” in these labs.

Quick Links

One of the coolest widget giving the opportunity to add “custom views”. It’s use is simple. Open the view of your choice. Like make a search as label:<your lable> + “any string available for search”. This will result in a mailbox view filtered on specific criteria you mentioned and now you can add the quick link for this specific view. Everytime onward, whenever you click on this quick link you’ll have this view; i.e search reasult based on the query your wrote.

From the above example, I am creating a quick view based on the following search string label:android is:unread This will result in mailbox view and list all the mails which has label “andriod” and are “unread”.

Thing Missing:

For the users who are having lots of Labels. Its cumbersome to scroll down to the bottom of the page to click on some quick link. It’d be great if GMail Team adds some drag-drop functionality for the panels at the left side.