Google+ provides Facebook alternative - Features - Technician - North Carolina State University

My first post to the paper "technician"
Google+ provides Facebook alternative - Features - Technician - North Carolina State University

my pre-print version is here

Social networking is rapidly evolving into an obnoxious potpourri of personal hindrance. It was once a growing rage, now it has just become an unavoidable adherence. Moreover the market is getting saturated, the numbers don’t matter anymore.

It all started with the shameless coup by a Harward sophomore, whom I don’t need to name anymore. Just one social networking, it took the whole world into its claws. Undoubtedly, it was a attractive venture and had all the ingredients in the right mix. It had everything for anyone. It made communication simple. Then came the micro-blogging race that nearly overtook facebook.

  Though these initiatives have their gore sire, they did find their use at times of voicing issues globally. Not to forget the Egypt riots, Anna hazares’s fast, facebook and twitter were the sole medium of communication for people to join, organise and raise their voice against the herculean bureaucrats.

Having said that, one must definitely appreciate the courage of Google to launch a supposedly novel product to capture yet another million hearts. Google+ project was a bold step considering the mass flop of their previous attempt to revolutionise social networking through the “Wave”.

“Introducing a few new thoughts on sharing”- this was the theme google wanted to focus and thats exactly what they have created by means of different concepts. Here is a brief know-how to familiarize ourselves with the Google+

A typical home page of Google+ looks something like this

Circles: a revolutionary thought to segregate your friend list based on your choice. It’s a closed group to maintain your data. “There are things, I don’t want to show my Mom but would want my close friends to talk about, that’s exactly circle helps me with” so says Katy.

Huddle:  this is not just a forum based talk-through. It provides conference video sync and gives a chat room environment.

Streams: our familiar and used information wall to read random posts from anybody. In a way its similar to the Google buzz, the fizzled out concept brought a few months back to break the facebook mayhem.

Photos: For those of you who are not aware, google has clubbed the Picasa service to G+ this where you maintain your photos from now on there is no separate arena to save your photos. But then you can decide your circles to view it.

So what has G+ transformed?

It has given a new meaning to one’s social life. Its has given respect to individuals personal space at the same time providing enough fun and food for others to see and talk about.

Even though G+ is similar to facebook in more than one aspect, people still believe its a worthy transformation from the latter. But its true that people are still hesitant to make that radical shift.    

How similar is it to facebook, here is the comparison.

Facebook’s driving force is its wall. G+ has streams

Facebook has chat messenger, G+ has Huddle, and you can even make conference video chats here.

G+ has circles facebook can’t do that!

Is it the weapon to break facebook’s success? We may not know but it just deserves to.

Yet another article in a newspaper :Android-the future of mobile technology

This article got published in NxG, The Hindu newspaper supplement click here

How smart is your phone?

TREND Android’s the future of mobile technology, says BHARADWAJ VASUDEVAN. Here are the why’s and how’s…

A much pronounced terminology in our present mobile market is the word “Smartphone”. Unfortunately, not everybody understands its real meaning. The moment we mention it, somebody is going to hoot, “I know, it’s an iPhone, right?”. Not to blame anybody but that is how it has been marketed, for smart phone is a very generic mould given to a complex hearing device.
Bridging platforms
On Google-ing it, I came across an interesting definition: “A Smartphone is a mobile phone offering advanced capabilities, often with PC-like functionality (PC-mobile handset convergence). There is no industry standard definition of a Smartphone.” The key thought is held within the braces.
Smartphones are meant to bridge the barrier between PC and mobile. And here comes the biggest fallacy of eras. Almost the whole last decade this meant, a cheap imitation of your Windows inside an awfully small screen with a gigantic toothpick called stylus.
Poking on every possible angle to just stutter open the tab equivalent of our start menu in Windows XP and try playing solitaire in it. Not to forget the Blackberry, unfortunately neither did have it and the ones who had it got stuck to it fascinated by its mail server. But there grew the sowing seeds of the current generation advancement only to be just hindered by the giant sites like Facebook and Twitter. For now, the one qualifying factor in a mobile for the young generation is to have access to Facebook in the phone. Let’s not forget our initial thought, convergence!
Looking at the present trend though may not be so prosperous towards advancement; mobile phones are going through that transition from being a vendor specific black box to a user customisable jukebox. Yes it is true; Android is going to rule the market just for this one reason. It gives the customer the flexibility to decorate their customisable ROM (namely cyanogenMOD, XDA, MIUI etc.) and at the same time share it with the others in the community. To support my argument, you will not be astonished to know that every quarter there is a minimum of 100 mobiles getting launched powered by Google.
Every vendor has now got only a small area of hoarding their market value by providing hardware infringement for jail breaking the phone (it’s the act of rooting your mobile to access the core software), which are also on the verge of getting abolished for its well known to them they can’t sustain longer with such a policy.
Power to you
So what difference does this make to us as a simple layman with very little buying power? It’s simple — as an individual we get options and the power to customise our requirement. Similar to the PC revolution, we will get access to individual hardware required to build our mobile and the vendors’ can have a hold only on the software part (Operating System). We would get to design our phone. And this is where Google is cashing in; it’s a company that believes in open source and that’s the reason they support this revolution.
They have launched special developer’s mobiles just to help anybody willing to grow android. Their NEXUS (NEXUS one and NEXUS S) product is a testimony to Google’s ideology towards developing a common product by not hoarding talents but by providing opportunity to anybody interested. Samsung is trying to do just that but the only difference is they have entered the market late and already people have gotten familiar with a better product in the name of android and they find no reason to shift to Samsung’s BADA market.
This revolution is heading towards a bright future in the mobile world by bringing out better mobiles that shall one day throw the PC away, just like PC did throw the typewriter and the latter the pen over the generations behind us.
I’m a proud owner of Nexus One myself!
Some links to help you understand this thought better:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_One
http://www.xda-developers.com/
http://www.cyanogenmod.com/
Bharadwaj is a Systems Engineer with Areva T&D India, Noida.