Monthly Archives: June 2010

How to get speech to text in HTC hero 2.1 india

Posted on June 29, 2010 by prasanth

This feature is disabled in India update of 2.1, which was released few days back.With speech to text you can speak something and the phone will convert that to text, so you could use this text to search web or send sms etc.Before you give it a try, its cool feature but doesn’t work that well in India.May its because of the India accent and you also get quite a few server errors. Its because they don’t have their speech to text servers in India etc. Now i know why HTC hero 2.1 update didn’t come with this feature. It would have been a bad user experience.If you still want to get this feature here is how to get this feature.Go to android market place and download this program “Speak N’ Send“. Once you install this app when you open this app it will ask you to download “voice search”, its not available in market place.So click the below link in the app and download from the apps own server. Once you download this program and install it. Open the program and Speech to text should be working.You can use it in this program or in regular google search on the device.Download Handcent sms program which will help you send sms using speech to text.Sorry for the bad screenshots this is the easiest way to get android screenshots, others are too complicated. I used my laptop webcam.

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HTC Hero gets 2.1 update in India

Posted on June 28, 2010 by prasanth

There is a thing or two other companies could learn about how to update a mobile device.HTC did a wonderful job of updating the HTC hero. First you get a small update which allows you to download firmware over the air. Then few days later they sent the 2.1 android update.I thought it would be like any other updates, it will completely reset my device. So i backed up everything on my phone that i wanted to my sd card using astro file explorer.HTC update didn’t reset anything. All my apps, settings, contacts, calendar were there.But it was disappointing that not all the features are available.No speech to text – this was one of the features I wantedNo live wallpaperWhat do you get in the 2.1 updateFew new HTC widgets (And the ability to download new htc widgets)To download new widgets go to widgets and look at the first link, it will allow you to download more widgets. try the notes widget its really cool.Improved market place now you can search better and also see screen shots of apps, Before installing them.There is a new navigation app, not yet tried out.You can now see what programs are using your battery etc.Now there is bluetooth file send & receive support. If you want to receive any thing from other mobiles or computers now you can do it through bluetooth. But its useful only for small files like mp3 etc. If you want to get anything bigger on to the device its still better to do it via usb. It took me 22 minutes to get a 150 mb file through bluetooth.There are quite a few small one but they are just normal updates nothing to write home about.That’s pretty much it.Pretty sad that not all the features of 2.1 android are ported over to this update. But the way they are updating the firmware for these devices is something special.I think the speech to text has problems with recognizing indian accent and may be that’s why they have not added it.The only issue i am facing with this update is wifi is not working on mine. It doesn’t show my wifi access point. i have reset the phone. And tried all the suggestions in android forums.But still no luck…

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June 2010 Photos

Posted on June 24, 2010 by prasanth
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HTC hero gets update in India

Posted on June 22, 2010 by prasanth

HTC hero gets OAU (over the air update) in India. This evening I got a pop up on my HTC hero android phone. It said system update and asked me to connect to wi-fi for faster download. But I went ahead and updated it on gprs connection.It took about 5 minutes, so I am guessing it’s around 10 mb download. So what are they offering in this update, nothing much.They say it has some you tube and system updates. But once it downloaded and installed the update. It restarted, I backed all my stuff expecting the update to wipe my apps.But nothing changed, the only thing they are adding is a software update link. Which checks for new updates regularly.I heard that this is how they roll their firmware. In a couple of weeks time the 2.1 update should arrive for HTC hero in India.The firmware update will be 100 mb or bigger download, so use wi-fi when it comes.Eagerly waiting for 2.1 update, it would be cool if they skip 2.1 and directly go to 2.2 update which is the latest version of Android.

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Cameras

Posted on June 20, 2010 by prasanth

Casio QV10 – My first Digital CameraThis was digital camera with a color screen. it’s so old that I don’t even remember when I bought it.It should be way before 2000. It cost me 15000 Rs and is made by Casio.It wasn’t even a 1 mega pixel camera.Having this was special remember, this was the time when you had to take a picture and wait for a week or so to get the photo developed. So compared to that this was magical.

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iPad hands on impression

Posted on June 17, 2010 by prasanth

Today I played with an iPad of a friend for a while and here are my impressions.First of all its quite small than I imagined. I was expecting something as big as or close to my 13 inch Macbook. But its small like a digital photo frame a bit bigger than that. Only a little bigger than that.Second thing is how heavy it is, I don’t think people will enjoy playing on it holding it in their hand for a long time.But you can easily use it on your lap or arm rest etc.As soon as I turned it on it showed connect to iTunes message. So had to connect it to iTunes and register before I could start using the iPad.The screen, I own an iPhone so that was not such a big deal. But such a big screen with capacitive touch is wonderful to use.Browsing on it looks wonderful, I surfed to quite a few sites on safari and they all look wonderful. And pinch and zoom makes it wonderful to read websites and use internet.I was using this on a wi-fi so pages were loading quite fast. It was a 3G iPad, but we didn’t have a sim so used wi-fi.Photos on this thing look wonderful, so do videos.Even though its hard to get any videos to fill the screen because of the screen size. You will have black bands on top and bottom of the video, but still video looks quite good.Music player on it is quite nice. The sound from the speakers was also quite loud, louder than the iPhone.Music and videos take a couple of touches more on the iPad than the iPhone. Which was quite strange, when you compare how good they are on iPhone. You have to select a video and then go to a page about the video info and then click play. On iPhone you just click a video and it plays.Games look really fun to play on iPad, its made for games especially board games.Over all its a fun experience using it, and the hardware is solid apple build. If you have seen a unibody Macbook it looks quite similar to that.Will I buy one at least not this version, I am excited about iPhone 4 though.I would recommend this to anyone who uses internet a lot and doesn’t type much.My friend got it from overseas, you can buy it in India anywhere from 35000 – 40000 Rs. Apple has not yet officially launched iPad in India. If they price it around 25000 Rs which is what it sells for in USA. I might think about it, but I know they will not sell it for less than 35000 Rs.

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Fifa World Cup 2010 theme songs

Posted on June 11, 2010 by prasanth

This is the official song Wavin’ Flag by K’naan for 2010 Fifa World Cup. This is once of the best theme songs for any games in recent times after La copa de la vida by Ricky Martin.This is a song by Shakira, sounds good and come on people its time for Africa.via YouTube – Shakira This time for Africa.

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