Google – swan tron dot com

July 21, 2011

Google Plus Instant Upload Settings

I am still horsing around with Google+ on my Droid 2. A few posts back, I lambasted the Instant Upload feature. The whole idea of tossing geo-location-having pictures onto Google’s servers seems awfully odd to me.

As this feature is ‘featured’ in Google+’s Android app, I figured I would play around with it some more, in order to gauge its evilness. The jury is still out.

It does work as intended. I snapped a few pictures of my fancy breakfast in my cubicle, with the Instant Upload activated, with the Battery Uploads selection…

cubicle bacon via instant upload — +1 delicious

Surely enough, once I plugged my D2 into the charger, it began to sync/upload. Within several seconds I was notified of my complete upload to G+. So, while I am still unsure of the impacts of this feature, I am impressed by its function. Google’s devs hit the ball out on the park with this one, in regards to pure functionality. Especially, as the Android Facebook and Twitter apps are rough at best. Hats off.

Expect a full review of G+ in the near future.

July 16, 2011

Android Instant Upload to Google(plus)

I created a Google+ account last week, in order to kick the tires a bit. I am going to hold off on a full review until I get some circles going, test the group video chat functions, etc.

I do want to mention one puzzling feature that Google has built into this thing.

Instant upload.

I don’t get it.

This makes for super easy uploading of images to your profile. Android phone…cellular radio connection…there you go. This app will run a cron job to dump your photos to your Google plus profile. The default setting is to allow this when you set up the Google+ Android app, with all new photos dumped to a private (non-shared) folder on your G+ account.

I opened up my settings and let this one rip.

webcam shot to google plus via android — plus one intrusive

It took about 20 seconds for that picture to show up in my private folder. Cool implementation, but pretty impractical.

Issues I have with this:

* Increased data usage. Especially as unlimited plans are goners.
* Battery nukage. One more thing to kill -9.
* Location data. Real time seeding a DB with your lat/long.
* Duplicate media. Primarily for deletions…two is worse than one.
* Neccessary? USB cord…bluetooth…MMS…physical media…email…

Suffice to say, I will have this ‘feature’ disabled. Stay tuned for the full review, and holler if you would like an invite.

September 13, 2010

SEO Protip: Ditch the Polls

Many moons ago, I heard through the grapevine that slow sites are penalized by search engines. Being the owner of a fast-as-lightning-bro-you-better-get-your-Nikes-bro site, I didn’t care. After plugging into the world of php, jquery, css, html, and a boat load of 3rd party crap on ol’ swantron.com, I have a slow site. Waah.

google folks impressed by logo...direct all job offers to @swantron

(Hint: that ampersand in front up there ^ means Twitter)

Looking into the cause of my crappy speed numbers, the first culprit was my stupid “poll” plugin that I have been using. Nobody cares about the polls on a site, unless they have exhausted every other iota of content on said site. Not the case here. Not the case by a long shot.

I do have some content that is popping in the search engines, however. Tons of impressions, in fact. I am lacking the placement, even on swantron-specific terms. Maybe my lean-and-mean approach will win me SEO gold, readership silver, and living off of saying dumb shit bronze. Maybe. Polls are officially off line until the jury has deliberated.

August 25, 2010

Droid 2 Must Have Apps

One week into my tenure as a happy Droid user, I have some insight into what an Android user must toss on his or her unit. This is a running list, of course, but solid enough for a post. Post and a pic…

I’ll keep it simple at this point. Top five apps I have encountered, as far as usefulness and coolness are concerned.

1) Advanced Task Killer. No questions asked…get this app first and foremost. The battery life on these suckers is awful at best. Multitasking is great, but murder on batteries. Nuke your background crap, and nuke it often.

Nuke it from orbit, if in orbit.

2) Google Sky Map. So awesome it hurts. Bonus: your non-Android-having buddies will bow to your phone’s awesomeness.

3) Google Translate. Como se dice ‘awesome’ en Espanol? Un momento…Impresionante. Get this app, amigos.

4) Robo Defence. Awesome game; good graphics. Perfect for meetings; free version for those non-committal types.

5) Google Goggles. Take pictures of junk, see search results. This is another deal-breaker when it comes to the new tech that you can pull out on these phones. Maybe I’ll post a few result sets of this guy in action…sort of like looking into the future with this guy.

As the forewarning stated, this is far from a static list…merely a snapshot of the stuff I am currently digging with a spoon. I’ll try to keep some updates on the site, when my knowledge and tastes mature.

FWIW, get one of these bad boys. You will most surely not regret it in the least. To the max.

June 16, 2010

Google Apps Chat

I’m all about Google. It is no secret that Android gives me the warm and fuzzies; I suppose that is the root of my affection. As I sit here, looking at my quickly-dying BlackBerry Pearl, I’m counting down the days until I can blog via my HTC Incredible. It will be, undoubtedly, incredible. Especially since I can have the Android holler at my Arduino, and vice versa. My warm and fuzzies just turned into warmer and fuzziers.

Enough about that. Today, we are talking Google Apps. Buy into the cloud computing revolution, my friends, as it is upon us. Google is far more than the search engine of times earlier:

If you haven’t received the memo, there now exists Google Apps:

Long story short, Google Apps allows you to free up system space by whisking your info into the clouds. Cloud computing is the future…no need to keep several TBs of data locally, when info can be collected and accessed via an online warehouse. Check out the Google Apps Marketplace, if you don’t believe me. Secure solutions for practically any info that was once married to one particular machine or server.

I stumbled across this site, after they asked me to blog for dough about them… Mavenlink is on the cutting edge of the Google Apps scene. Login with your Google ID, and you are given direct integration with Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites, et. al.

Now that Mavenlink is now integrated with Google Apps, sharing info is easy as whistling Dixie. As far as I can tell, the ease of and subsequent utilization of Google Docs alone would pay for itself in absolutely no time. Perhaps I’m jaded after far-too-long spent accessing user shared folders and fighting firewall rules, but I feel that documents in the cloud is a superior means of disseminating information.

Hit one of those links and see for yourself. I’m going to go look at some more Android spec sheets. So excited.

April 1, 2010

Worst. Joke. Ever.

Slashdot was bad, google is worse. Remember the whole Topeka changing its name to to Google thing…

hahahaha — that's funny, because Topeka changed it's name to Google

…see? It is like that, but only more asinine. Loads of laughter.

(disclaimer…google sandboxed swantron during my domain name change, rendering my PR 0…assfaces also dropped me from AdSense twice…fuck Google)

December 6, 2009

Storm 2 /vs/ Droid

I’ve been a BlackBerry fanboi for quite a while. With my Pearl nearing the end of it’s life…the question becomes Sexxy Storm…

Or Dirty Droid

I originally assumed it would be a no-brain victory for the Storm 2 and it’s improved function over Gen 1. Since I don’t use BB Messenger, I have lately been thinking the the $199 Droid might be the way to go. I have put my RIM phones through hell in the past, and definitely like that aspect over anything I have seen from Motorola. I basically just need something with a good enough OS to not lock up Pandora and Opera Mini…not sure that the Droid is what I totally need right now.

Vote: If I was making the move today…it would be for the Storm. Not a big fan of the Google team right now, and RIM has been very good to me.

December 4, 2009

So long, AdSense

Adsense booted me for too many clicks per page…

So long. I’ll take my fracking business to Amazon…might even do some blog-vertising…who knows?