Category Archives: Google

Best new features of Android 4.2


Recently on 29th October 2012, Google announced Android 4.2 an incremental update to Android jellybean. They also announced  2 new Nexus devices – Nexus 4, the next mobile of Nexus series manufactured by LG and Nexus 10, a 10 inch tablet manufactured by Samsung.

Android Jellybean 4.2

Here is a list of best new features of Android 4.2 -

  1. Widgets on lock screen: Now you can add widgets to your lock screen. You can swipe left or right of the lock screen to access those widgets. Say for example you can add widgets like stock ticker, calendar etc. on lock screen. So that you don’t have to lock the phone every time you want to access these information quickly. You can add widgets to lock screen from Settings->Security.
  2. Quick settings in Notification bar: Now when you scroll down the notification bar there is a small button for quick settings in the top-right corner. Clicking this button brings a new quick settings menu with all sorts of toggles like – wifi, airplane mode, brightness, wifi, bluetooth etc. Average users won’t need to go to settings most of the time.
    If you want to directly access this quick settings menu, there is a gesture shortcut – pull down the notification bar with two fingers.
  3. Gesture Typing: Google added a new keyboard to Android with gesture typing feature. You can swipe through the keyboard to type using one finger. This is very similar to Swype keyboard but with realtime gesture recognition. It keeps on predicting word realtime as you swipe through the keyboard and shows the predicted word in a pop-up.
  4. More of Google Now:My favorite app on Jellybean is Google Now. Its a star-trek like predictive engine from Google. In Android 4.2 they have lot more functionalities to Google Now. It can now automatically notify you of any delivery notifications, flight details on the day of flight, about hotel reservation on the day of check-in etc. (Hint: It automatically extract these kind of information for you from your gmail account). It just works seamlessly you don’t have to ask anything. Just the right information at right time.
  5. Camera: Some uber-cool new features in camera has been introduced.
    One of them is Photo Sphere – Earlier you could just take 180 degrees panorama. Now you can take 360 degrees panorama. Imagine Google Maps Street View.
    Now you don’t have buttons and knobs on the camera screen. Just touch the phone and use gestures take photo, turn on/off flash etc.
    After you have taken the photo you can apply cool filters like Grayscale, B/W, Sepia etc.
Did you like these new features? Did you discover some more new features which I have not listed? Keep on commenting.

Searching for Google Apps Reseller?


Google apps for business is a suite of products like Gmail for your domain, Google Calendar, Google Drive and a lot more. Check out the benefits of deploying Google Apps here – http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/benefits.html.

A lot of businesses are now going online and they want to deploy Google Apps. Not all of these businesses specially the small ones (SMBs) have enough resources to take care of deploying and managing Google Apps for their business. For them there are Google authorized resellers. Google has launched a directory cum search tool for finding resellers which will meet their requirements in deploying Google apps for business – http://www.google.com/a/partnersearch/.

Small businesses can now easily search for resellers in their area which will help them get online. Check out official Google blog here - http://googleenterprise.blogspot.in/2012/10/search-click-call-get-connected-with.html

Google Now : Behind the scenes


Check out this video to get more insights into what all Google Now is capable of and how is Google able to predict future for you.

For more details check out this article on The Vergehttp://www.theverge.com/2012/10/29/3569684/google-now-android-4-2-knowledge-graph-neural-networks

What’s wrong with binary search!


There’s a bug in the code of “Binary Search” as most of us write it. When asked most of us code binary search as -

int binary_search(int *a, int len, int key)
{
int low = 0;
int high = len-1;

while (low <= high)
{
int mid = (low+high)/2;
int val = a[mid];

if (val < key)
{
low = mid + 1;
} else if (val > key)
{
high = mid - 1;
} else
{
return mid;
}
}
return -1;
}

Now, try to find the bug in the above code. The bug surfaces if the array is too large. If the length of the array is too large, line number 8 in the above code would cause the variable “mid” to overflow and hence will have a negative number and the code breaks. A very simple solution would be to replace line 8 in the above code with -

mid = low + (high-low)/2;

So, you see how bugs could creep in your code. To see more detailed discussion on how the bug was discovered and a couple of more elegant, efficient solutions check out this Google Research blog – http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/06/extra-extra-read-all-about-it-nearly.html