android Archives - Adam Yamada

15th Google Birthday celebrated with Google Pinata Doodle & Google in 1998

In case you hadn't heard or seen, today is Google's Birthday. The search engine giant celebrated with a fun Google Pinata Doodle game. You earn points by whacking the Pinata for the most candy, which tabulates a score, then you can share you score with people on Google+ if you want. Google also inserted an Easter Egg into it's search engine so users can be taken back to Google in 1998. All you do is type into Google's search bar “Google in 1998” and you can see what the Google looked like back when it first started.

What's fun is they have links at the bottom to competitors search engines at the time via Archive.org so you can see how much better and cleaner Google was compared to the other search engines. The majority of the ones in 1998 are now gone or are were bought out.

Google also made a sweet visual timeline of 15 years of Google.

It's incredible to think how quickly technology and how fast Google has evolved over the years. Recently Google switched their popular Google Keyword Tool to the Google Keyword Planner and they just celebrated 10 Years of Google Adsense. In addition Google's most used tool, their search engine, got updated with Google Penguin 2.0 to improve search quality and results. (At least that's what Matt Cutts and Google claims.)

In tech years Google is probably considered 100 years old since the titan of search has been around for so long. How old do you think Google is in tech years? 🙂

Have any thoughts about Googling turning 15 years old? Want to share your experiences of how Searching the web was before Google? How has Google's search engine and many other products improved, changed, or ruined your life? 🙂

Greader is The Old Reader Android app & Mobile Browser experience is Sweet

UPDATE: Apparently The Old Reader has a ton of apps available for mobile devices. You can check The Old Reader app list for all compatible apps you can use. I guess I was too stupid to notice! 🙂

Yesterday I wrote an article titled “4 Reasons I Switched from Feedly to The Old Reader.” Even though I think most people agree with my reasons, I will admit reason number #4 “There is No Android App” was not accurate. The Old Reader Android app does exist as you can use the Greader Android app on a mobile device.

I actually spent some time playing around with the Greader Android app paired with my RSS feeds from The Old Reader this morning and it works flawlessly. Greader is quite fast at pulling in and updating the feeds from The Old Reader. What's weird is that it seems faster than using The Old Reader on a desktop browser. Not sure how that works but kudos to the Greader development team for making a fast RSS experience. In addition the Greader app is intuitive and simple to use.

It makes sense that Greader switched over it's services to pull feeds from The Old Reader after Google Reader shutdown. It was the unofficial Google Reader app until Google decided to shutter their RSS reader. So now you can use the Greader Android app with The Old Reader and Feedly if you want.

Something I should also mention is that the The Old Reader is mobile browser enabled and responsive (meaning it works on touchscreens and tablets.) The Old Reader works quite well on a mobile browser. I tried out the The Old Reader's mobile site and was pleasantly surprised by the experience.

Personally would I prefer using the Greader Android app but I'd recommend trying out The Old Reader mobile site and seeing which you personally prefer to use. It's hard to know unless you try it yourself.

Anyway if you know if there is another The Old Reader Android app or way to use it on on a smartphone please leave a comment below. In addition if you prefer another RSS service to The Old Reader and want to share I would be happy for you to share your experiences. Seems a lot of people are still looking for suitable replacements to Google Reader.

Twitter will stop support of TweetDeck Mobile Apps

A few days ago on TweetDeck's official blog on Posterous, Twitter surprised the Social Media universe or more specifically the “Twitterverse.” Twitter announced that they will be ending support for TweetDeck mobile apps for Android smartphones and the iPhone. Also Twitter will not be supporting the desktop version of the Twitter application anymore known as TweetDeck AIR (it runs on the Adobe AIR platform.)

Here is what Twitter said on the Posterous blog post that was posted on March 4th, 2013.

TweetDeck is the most powerful Twitter tool for tracking real-time conversations. Its flexibility and customizable layout let you keep up with what’s happening on Twitter, across multiple topics and accounts, in real time. To continue to offer a great product that addresses your unique needs, we’re going to focus our development efforts on our modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck. To that end, we are discontinuing support for our older apps: TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone. They will be removed from their respective app stores in early May and will stop functioning shortly thereafter. We’ll also discontinue support for our Facebook integration.

TweetDeck mobile apps makes it easy and convenient for people with multiple Twitter accounts to control them all from the same application I have been using TweetDeck on my Android smartphone to handle my personal Twitter account @AdamYamada and the one for Cody and Sierra, my two singing dogs, @DogsSing. Even a couple of other Twitter accounts are on there and I used it often to send Tweets to Facebook pages or just update Facebook pages.

I am bit annoyed that Twitter has decided to pull the plug on TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone. It has over 1 million downloads which is a pretty sizable user-base in my opinion. The reason Twitter probably decided to pull the plug on TweetDeck for smartphones is that the majority of people are using Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android apps instead. Unlike me they do not have a need have multiple accounts they need or want to control from the same app.

I am also annoyed Twitter will not support Facebook integration but I understand since that is technically their biggest competitor in the Social Media world. I guess Twitter has made a calculated move to try to push more people to stay on their platform.

Ending support for the desktop version does make sense though. Over the past couple of months I have migrated to using the TweetDeck Chrome app which is convenient, fast, and easy to use. I bet from a developer standpoint it is easier to run TweetDeck in the cloud. From the blog post it seems like Twitter's data probably reflects that.

In many ways, doubling down on the TweetDeck web experience and discontinuing our app support is a reflection of where our TweetDeck power-users are going.

What does not make sense is that Twitter decided to post the news on a Posterous blog. Why? Twitter acquired Posterous awhile ago and will be shutting down Posterous on April 30th, 2013. You can read Sachin Agarwal's, the Founder and CEO of Posterous, blog post about it. (If you have a Posterous blog you should go backup your data immediately if you want it. You can transfer it to WordPress or Tumblr blog.) Twitter it seems want all the focus to be on developing Twitter and the buyout was probably what is known as an “acquihire.” These acquihires by big tech companies are usually just to get the talent from the company they are buying out and not necessarily for the technology itself.

If anyone would like to suggest a good TweetDeck replacement, please leave a comment and suggest one. I most likely will be trying out different Twitter apps that can handle multiple accounts over the next month or two. I will keep people updated with what I do and don't like.

If you are a TweetDeck user and as unhappy as I am, let me know how you feel. I would be interested to hear from others.