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Stop YouTube videos from buffering
Mar 19th
While watching videos on YouTube I usually like to keep the channel page open and watch the videos in a different tab. The only problem is as soon as I open the channel page, the latest video starts playing. I pause it but the video is still downloading and I’m not on unlimited data connection here.
So what I do is open the video I want to watch in a new tab and close the channel page and after watching the video start the channel page again, then start a new video in another tab and again close the channel page and…well…you get the idea.
Now I don’t have to go through this lengthy process because YouTube has added an option to stop the download – just right click on the video and delect “stop download”.
This feature is also helpful when you have already watched the video on a different website but you go to the YouTube video page to read the comments or leave a response.
(via Google OS)
Emailing into Evernote just got better
Mar 17th
I don’t know about Android and iPhone but on Symbian emailing notes, pictures, files to Evernote is much faster than using the WRT widget based Evernote client. I just use the default messaging app to email notes, files, pictures etc. to Evernote, but till now I had no way of managing those notes and files and it just made the proccess more time consuming.
All the notes and files I emailed were saved in default notebook and were not tagged – this causes clutter which so not what Evernote is ment for.
I think Evernote people realised it. Now with the latest improvement you can email note to specific notebook along with tags.
- Use @ for notebook : Use an @ symbol followed by the name of your destination notebook.
- Use # for tags : Use an # symbol followed by the tag or tags you wish to assign. You can have multiple tags, just make sure each one starts with an #.
Example – Subject: trip to florida @travel #expense report – would create a notebook titled trip to florida in my travel notebook tagged expense report.
As of now this works only for existing notebooks and tags only i.e. you cannot create new notebooks and tags with this feature (which is a bummer). In the subject line, always put the note title first, then add any nootbook and tags. This feature won’t work for notebook which has ‘@’ or ‘#’ in the title and tags which has ‘#’ in the title.
You can find your Evernote email address in account info and it’ll look something like this – [username].12345@m.evernote.com
Happy Note-taking! 
(via Evernote Blog)
A Symbian Client
Mar 10th
One thing that troubles me is that developers pay attention only to iPhone and Android, Symbian is an afterthought or many a times Symbian is completely ignored, they don’t even acknowledge that there is a mobile platform called Symbian. Now why does Symbian need developers attention? – For completing the service experience. And what is service experience? It means that you should be able to enjoy the service like everyone is.
There are services like Groveshark, LastPass, Paypal, Last.fm, Spotify, Evernote, Dropbox etc. These services have mobile client also which makes life much more easier. But… But… they are not available for Symbian. I pay to use most of these services but I’m not getting the full benefit of it. The number of Symbian users are more than iPhone, Android, Palm and Windows mobile users combined.
These services and developers don’t realize that by embracing Nokia and Symbian they will be getting more new customers. And developing for Symbian is not hard, in fact Symbian gives you more options to choose from when building an app. For developing apps for android, you can use only higher/better version of java on the other hand on Symbian you can use QT, Python, C+ + and Java.
Some of the apps that I should mention are Gravity, Mobbler, the official WordPress app (early testing stage), TuneWiki, Opera Mini, Opera Mobile, Skyfire, ereader, SmartMovie, Midomi, Nimbuzz, Playlist DJ, Handy Apps, AccuWeather, Symtorrent, snaptu are some of the apps which are very good.
For the last two weeks I’ve been trying sending emails to customer care of various services demanding a Symbian client, telling them the benefits of having a Symbian client and threatening to quit the service if I don’t get a symbian client. ;p
Here are some of the responses I got -
1. Evernote – Evernote does have a Symbian client in the shape of a WRT widget. It is slow and clunky and has not been updated for months and customer service politely said – Sorry, we have no information about our Symbian plans.
2.LastPass – lastpass is a password management service and you get a symbian client with premium service which costs $1 a month. The symbian client is again very clunky and doesn’t work with touchscreen phones — They were concerned about my problem, wanted more information and assured me they will fix it soon.
3.Last.fm – We do have Mobbler and it is better than other clients, even the official ones. I want last.fm to acknowledge and include Mobbler is their official page. — sadly no response so far.
4.Paypal – It has a mobile site which doesn’t come close to the iPhone app experience, and as expected no response from paypal people.
5.Groveshark – The music streaming service have me a nice reply – ” Thank you for the email. We are working on a Symbian mobile version as we speak. However, its in the early stages of development so there’s no release date yet. —- That’s ok, we can wait, as long as there is something in the pipes.
Next I’ll be knocking the doors of Dropbox and many ebook services. So stay tuned.
10 billion Downloads and counting….
Feb 25th
There is no denying that iTunes is the most popular stop for all music downloads. A few hours ago iTunes hit the 10,000,000,000 mark….WOW!!! Although it has competitors like Comes With Music, Spotify etc. they are not making any dent in the iTunes business. These figures clearly indicate that Apple iTunes is going strong and currently I don’t see any reason it’ll slow down.
What I’m really interested to see is whether the iBook Store would be as successful as iTunes store.
Google Buzz got a little more private
Feb 14th
The Auto-follow feature which was intended to make the "Getting Started" with Buzz experience quick and easy didn’t go down well with people. Three days ago Google made some changes to Buzz to address the concerns of people –
1. More visible option to not show followers/people you follow on your public profile.
2. Ability to block anyone who follows you. Today Google tweaked it a bit more -they have changed the Auto-follow to Auto-suggest.
- With Auto-suggest, you’ll follow people only after you review and click – " Follow selected people and start using Buzz "
- Buzz will no longer connect your public Picasa Web albums and Google Reader shared items automatically. This is term good cause I heard a lot of people were going to fu*k and sue Google for that.
- Gmail settings now has a Buzz tab from which you can hide Buzz from Gmail or disable it completely.
Google is really concentrating on Buzz, this is apparent from the fast tweaks made by Google on the basis of feedback. So, are you satisfied with the new settings?
(via Gmail Blog)
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