Music: If the Hudson overflows

A charity single for Hurricane Sandy Relief

Okay, really liking the new Gmail app’s look & feel updates! Some slick animations as well.

Makes me agree even more with the Patrick Gibson’s thought that Google is getting better at design faster than Apple is getting better at web services.

More info about the new version is here.

I’ve been a Posterous advocate for some time now and my loyalty to the platform only grew the more I used it. It wasn’t without its problems (themes, for a start), but when it came to posting & sharing, Posterous stood out on platform and features. I ran four different blogs on Posterous — what-was-this-blog, food, corporate and more recently, a collection of pictures — and converted a few people to it as well.

Something I’m yet to see in any other platform is how well Posterous managed sharing. The ability for group blogs to have posts shared to a group account and people’s personal accounts was pretty solid, not to mention Posterous’ autoposting capabilities. For example, I never once manually uploaded a picture to my Flickr in over two years but I have a full photo history there.

Sadly, their Twitter acquisition has changed all of this.

As Twitter tends to do, they hired the Posterous team for talent, which is great and I’m really happy for the guys too — I’ve followed some of them and know them to be driven individuals who care about their products.

But I also know that Posterous will not develop new features for the foreseeable future. This is a problem in and of itself. What’s more, existing things are starting to break (or being intentionally deactivated, I’m not really sure) and there’s no one supporting that.

At first I thought my big question would be where do I go. Oddly enough, that decision didn’t take long, but I learnt that the real question was how.

Wordpress is the only platform that has a Posterous importer that actually works but I had/have no interest in moving there.* I have no inclination to maintain a self-hosted break-fix blog and .com tends to be a little limited with the kind of tweaks I like to have. Plus, my blog is a lot about bits and pieces, thoughts and observations, a link here, a picture there and for that, Tumblr actually does a significantly better job, while managing the environment for me. So this is where I am today.

In fun timing, Tumblr’s recent post:

Tumblr has broken into the Top 10 sites in the U.S., and now has a worldwide audience of 170 million people.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve moved my blogs and have started a shutdown of the old. The blog & feed URL will stay in case there are people that do actually read along.

At the rate the migration occurred, I think I will be annoyed enough to write out a post talking about how this was accomplished, because it is in fact turning out to be a rather woeful experience. More on that later.

To Posterous. The platform that was.

Update, 15 Feb 2013: As expected, Posterous will shut down April 30.

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*For the record, I do think that Wordpress is one of the strongest content/blogging platforms out there, it’s just not for me.

Music: Perfect Darkness

Absolutely addicted.

(If you’re interested, a version of Fink performing the song is available here.)

Video: Christmas lights Gangnam Style

There is too much talent in this world.

Alexander McNabb:

Dubai was founded on trade, not real estate booms. It was founded on entrepeneurialism and what ‘the authorities’ always liked to call a ‘laissez faire’ attitude to free market economics. It was opportunistic. And it will continue to succeed on trade, not selling implausible dreams. Its most successful and enduring assets, Jebel Ali, Emirates, Port Rashid and others, are built on trade. 

…

The million dollar question is whether we, collectively, have learned our lesson. Whether we can build for the future without being pitched back into the nightmare of the boom.

Good read: Are We Back On Track? by @alexandermcnabb

jonathanmoore:

Over the course of my career and journey as an entrepreneur, I have learned that success and fulfillment is found when we push ourselves beyond our comfort zone. There is tremendous value in having knowledge ahead of time — I am now CPR certified — but simply taking action is often what it takes.

You don’t have to do it right. You just have to do something.

You just have to do something

Intense.

The operation to rescue Manhattan’s drowned internet

..RIM today announced BBM version 7, a free update for the globally popular mobile social network, which will allow customers to make free voice calls to other BBM customers around the world over a Wi-Fi® connection.

BBM is still one of the top two reasons why people still want a BlackBerry, and RIM has just taken that to a new level with native voice support.

Ofcourse, it remains to be seen how carriers respond to this.

BBM now with voice over Wi-Fi

The news continues with Twitter’s new API policies continuing to cut down on Twitter clients. We’ve seen incidents already with LinkedIn and other clients, and while I do get where Twitter might be coming from, there’s something to be said about the approach they are taking.

In this case, without an existing Win8 client already (and no immediate release date either, even if one is in the works), users will suffer. And by suffer, I mean try to use Twitter web.

Read on.

More Twitter API restrictions, now for Win8

Bazinga.

Paneer in a cup? Sweetened to perfection? Absolutely!

Quick Facts

Brand: Samsung
Model: NX1000

20.3MP APS-C Sensor, 8fps, 1/4000 shutter speed, 1080p fullHD video recording

Standard lens: 20–50mm 
Weight: 0.22kg (without battery+SD card) 
Other lens options: 60mm f/2.8 Macro, 16mm f/2.4 Ultra Wide Pancake, 85mm f/1.4

Full spec sheet

Note: I received the Samsung NX1000 camera as a review unit.

“I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw the pics in your gallery. I don’t want to even begin to believe that a compact camera can do those shots.

I won’t believe it.”

When I first heard about Samsung’s new NX series line, I was a little intrigued. Samsung is not exactly known for its cameras, although that also means that I went in with no expectations.

When I actually managed to take a few pictures with one, I was surprised. The Samsung NX1000 holds its own when it comes to photography as a compact camera for those wanting the options of inter-changable lenses while still carrying around a more portable device. And before you ask, yes, it does come in pink.

Overall, the camera is definitely recommended as a quality 20.3 megapixel camera that takes great shots whether in all-auto (SMART) or various less-auto/manual modes, at a competitive price in its range. The NX1000 does have features such as Wi-Fi, i-Fn and inbuilt filters that those cameras don’t; so it’s a good buy for the photo aficionado that wants something in that price range and quality.

All other things being the same, I think its worth discussing the three elements that give the camera (well, the series, considering other cameras in the Samsung NX range have them as well) a little edge.

Wi-Fi

Samsung has incorporated Wi-Fi capabilities into the NX series. This allows you to:

• Upload pictures to an offsite storage (currently integrated with SkyDrive)
• Upload pictures to social media (Facebook, Picasa)
• Extract pictures to your smartphone (iPhone, Android)

For the share-the-second-I-take-a-picture generation, these are must-haves, although my own use of this during the review period wasn’t excessive. The Skydrive and social media integration are pretty self explanatory. The smartphone option is enabled with a Mobile-Link app for iOS and Android that allows you to connect to the camera as a hotspot, and offload pictures to the phone. This is actually quite nice, since you can edit them a bit if you like, and shuttle them off via social networks or email.

Setup was rather easy so it wouldn’t be a pain for the non-network-savvy. Just a few clicks, and you’re on your way.

Pulling photos onto a smartphone was a breeze

i-Fn

I used this feature the most out of the three. The Samsung smart lenses have an outer ring that allows you to activate menu controls to select options such as ISO and filters (see below) by rotating the ring rather than clicking the buttons. This made for a seamless experience during shooting without losing your grip, particularly if you want to take the setting to an extreme value.

Filters

In today’s Instagram age, filters are a smart add-on, no pun intended. The camera comes built in the a variety of smart filters such as vingetting, fish-eye, haftone dots, old film, etc. If I were to use filters, this’d be a better way I’d do it since you can actually position your shot to meet the filter rather than hope it works out in post-processing/uploading.

Filter selection was easy enough and didn’t take more than a minute to master.

Using inbuilt filters: Dragon Mart, Dubai with Vingetting

Now onto the usual.

Build

I was happy with the build quality. While the body is plastic, it doesn’t feel cheap and is steady to use even when sitting in a moving vehicle (and no, I don’t mean while also driving!).

Something was bothering me about the camera as I held it, but it took me more than a day to figure out what it was. I was about to take a macro shot of my favorite photography subject — that’s right, food — and as I brought the camera close to my face, I realized… the NX1000 does not have a viewfinder at all. Your interface with the camera is entirely with 3.0" LCD screen. This wasn’t tough to get used to but it took me by a little surprise as I’m someone that uses both for photography. That said, I’m sure the lack of a viewfinder helped with the form factor and I imagine most ready shooters will not mind.

There’s no built in flash, but an external flash is provided. I’m personally not a fan of using a flash in the day-to-day photography I do, so was happy with the decision since I’m sure it helped keep the weight that little bit down.

Low light

For a compact camera in its range, the NX1000 seems to handle low light shooting rather well. Both twilight shooting and indoor shooting were simple enough to do without too much modification; the auto-ISO settings seem to work well, and I was able to get a decent shot in with the ISO set at 12,800 (max setting). Granted, the picture was a little noisy but it did mean that a lower setting would have worked fine.

Low light indoor shooting looks good too. Hummus!

Overall

With the right amount of manual and effective auto controls, the NX1000 is a good camera for people of any expertise level, and the build is a plus because it’s definitely something you’ll be happy carrying around. I think the NX1000 will compete directly with some entry level DSLRs on price — such as the Canon 550–650D range — and while they don’t exactly fall into the same class of cameras*, it’s a comparison that will happen considering the price point. The NX1000 carries the edge in portability and savvy features such as Wi-Fi and filters, while the DSLR would probably still be more appealing to the traditional photographer with more specific requirements.

You can see more sample shots in the picture gallery below. As the opening quote suggests, the shots are pro-photographer (and big Canon-fan) approved!

https://chiragnd.jux.com/653345?sans_gallery=true

PS I’m currently looking at the other end of the same range, the NX20, so stayed tuned for a review soon!

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*The NX1000 is a mirrorless camera. Mirrorless cameras tend to be more portable and compact compared to their DSLR counterparts, but suffer a bit in action-shot making. At the end of the day, these are two different systems although the price points are starting to line up. If you’re interested, this link has a good overview of the difference.

Government code-breakers are working on deciphering a message that has remained a secret for 70 years.

It was found on the remains of a carrier pigeon that was discovered in a chimney, in Surrey, having been there for decades.

It is thought the contents of the note, once decoded, could provide fresh information from World War II.

Interesting indeed.

Schneier’s blog (linked below) also lists additional articles covering the discovery.

Intriguing: WWII carrier pigeon crypto-message discovered

He looked out the window staring at the half lit moon, a little dazed, a little amazed.

He turned to see if their fingers were still interlocked. They weren’t.

The sound of music muttered softly from the car speakers behind him.

The calm engulfed him.

He messaged her.

With my photography skills receiving an update over the last year, and Navratri just wrapping up, I thought it might be a good chance to give the awesome Mohanthal another papparazzi session (here’s last year’s take). Mohanthal continues to be one of the few indian sweets I’m extremely partial to, although I only tend to like the version you see pictured and one that is distributed at Ambaji when we visit their for prayers. The naihar version is topped graciously with pistachios and flavored with a hint of saffron. Mmm-mm good!

It begins..Happy Durgashtami to those celebrating!

The 6 Stages of Debugging: That can’t happen. That shouldn’t happen. Hmmm, weird. Why does that happen? Oh, I see. How did that ever work?

From @the_webhamster.

Oh how I can identify.

Silence, broken only by the click of her red heels against the pavement.

She reached out to find his arm, feeling like she would stumble if she didn’t.

He felt a light touch and turned to her, the surprise evident on his face.

Look calm, she thought to herself, flashing a smile.

He slowed down a little so they wouldn’t lose the new connection.

She withdrew the arm 15 seconds later, just as people walked by.

Hey, LinkedIn, why would I believe you this time?

I get a new invite every month, then a reminder that it’s the last day…then that I have it for another month. Plus after my experience with them overcharging me (severely) over an ads offer, I’m just not interested at this point.

Just came across this post. Fascinates me, this. Makes me feel almost below-normal. It speaks volumes on Jobs’ eye for detail. How many people would catch that at his level?

“I’ve been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I’m not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn’t have the right yellow gradient. It’s just wrong and I’m going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?”

The devil’s in the details

If you haven’t read about this hack already, take 20 minutes out of your day and read through the article attached below. While the importance of complex passwords, separating your accounts and more can’t be over-stated, there some simple things you should do right away, for example:

• Enable two-factor authentication in Gmail so that accessing it requires two items — your password and a one-time code — to make it tougher to get in.
• Facebook has a few security settings that you should make use of. Spend a few minutes, clear out unknown sessions and devices, and enable notifications when your account is accessed on an unknown computer/device.
• Don’t ‘daisy chain’ your critical accounts — ie, prevent making two very active accounts the recovery/backup account for each other.
• This one is for everyone that has asked me for this advice over the last 5 years — no, don’t click on a link or open an attachment to something you do not know or understand. If it was really important, the person will find a way to make sure you see it.

The article is a worth read to understand sometimes how simple it is to get access to your life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big advocate of the web in terms of function, use and all that pretty stuff. But everything has its cons so let’s not be careless about it.

To the experts, I say we really need to look at some standardization. The line — ‬’[t]he very four digits that Amazon considers unimportant enough to display in the clear on the Web are precisely the same ones that Apple considers secure enough to perform identity verification’‪ — concerns me deeply.

Meet Mat Honan. He just had his digital life dissolved by hackers. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired. Illustration: Ross Patton/Wired

In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed. First my Google account was taken over, then deleted. Next my Twitter account was compromised, and used as a platform to broadcast racist and homophobic messages. And worst of all, my AppleID account was broken into, and my hackers used it to remotely erase all of the data on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook.

…

But what happened to me exposes vital security flaws in several customer service systems, most notably Apple’s and Amazon’s. Apple tech support gave the hackers access to my iCloud account. Amazon tech support gave them the ability to see a piece of information — a partial credit card number — that Apple used to release information. In short, the very four digits that Amazon considers unimportant enough to display in the clear on the web are precisely the same ones that Apple considers secure enough to perform identity verification. The disconnect exposes flaws in data management policies endemic to the entire technology industry, and points to a looming nightmare as we enter the era of cloud computing and connected devices.

Much like I did with Lion, I picked up the Mountain Lion upgrade to Apple’s OS X the day it was available on the Mac App store. I’ve already discussed it before, but this whole download new version of OS while sitting in your room is pretty brilliant. But I’m more amazed when I think of the 3 million downloads at $20. That’s $60 million in sales without a dime in shipping. In 3 days.

In traditional bullet point style, here goes.

• 10.8 is a massive performance upgrade. Everything just seems to run faster, and there are huge improvements to memory management (I use Free memory to keep an eye on available memory). But there’s more. The return from sleep is brilliant — seconds over what was normally a 4–5 minute return. The other improvement I’m seeing is when I connect over to an external monitor — the resolution shift/adjustments take seconds now as well.
• I think Growl probably kicked themselves in the foot (paw?) at some point by going paid, but regardless, the notification center is a great add-on. More apps will naturally integrate themselves, which will make it better. It’s great though that Chrome is Notification center-ready already. Twitter is so-so; it’s nice to get alerts but annoying that to reply it takes me to Twitter web, which isn’t a good UX. (No, don’t ask what a chirag sexy cake is).

• Quirk: Apple has announced that FB integration (at the OS level, and into notification center as well) will come by in the fall. But as I accidentally discovered, the packages are available within Mountain Lion already. Hmm.

• Firing up notification center takes some understanding (a quick google explains it though), but there isn’t a hot key with the magic mouse. I haven’t been bothered by this yet but it would have been nice.
• Fonts. I had the same problem with Lion — post the upragde, Chrome’s font rendering went for an absolute toss, and for the font-geek in me, I’m forced to use Safari when I can’t stand it. Let’s hope they fix that quickly.
• I like Safari’s zoom-out tab mode. It’s cool. I’m not sure it’s necessarily too useful though — I’ve never thought of it as a problem to navigate tabs, but it is pretty.
• Icons seem to have gotten a facelift — well, the Retina Macbook Pro is responsible for that, I’m sure. But it’s nice to see crisper, brighter icons around.

• The return of the Save As.. is a welcome one for most people I’m sure.
• It would seem that I can no longer view the battery life time remaining on the status bar — requiring a click to be able to see this information.
• Freeing up an additional 10GB of space post the upgrade? Sold!

Overall I’m really happy with this upgrade. The performance improvements alone are solid, and notification center is a good answer to a common problem.

Well there you have it. At least I didn’t do another ‘is Mountain Lion worth $20’ with a cost breakdown post, right?

For me the fun of traveling is getting to sample the local fast food and other cuisines.

To those unfamiliar with the term chaat is I northern India’s street fast food. Spicy, a mix of cold and hot, sweet and salty, crispy and chewable the famed street food of Delhi is one not to be missed. Popular joints such as Nathu’s, Haldiram’s, Bikanerwala all provide a range of delectable chaat that you can make a full meal out of!

Feast on pani puris, aloo tikki chaat, choley batoore, and so many things that I can’t even possibly mention in this post! Here’s a little sneak peak!