It is, however, interesting to see the quality of apps in the Android Market increase in-spite of the currently limited earning potential. One such application that I recently came across is aCar. As our smart phones become more and more integrated into our daily activities, apps like aCar will definitely be more in demand.

aCar is an application that you can use on your Android device to effectively track the the fuel efficiency, maintenance record and expenses that you incur on all your vehicles. I currently have it set-up to track all these for my car and my motorcycle. aCar allows you to store data for each fuel fill-up that you do for your vehicle and calculates values for mileage, expenses and other metrics based on these details. You can also put in all your service records and future service details and aCar will remind you when the service is due.

When it comes to setting your service reminders, you can choose exactly which part of your vehicle requires service if its not a full service. The built in lists are extremely detailed and I have yet to not find an item that I needed.

Another interesting (while not very useful) feature are the charts that aCar can generate from all the data the you put into the application. The graphs and charts are extremely detailed and very nicely done. They are a bonus in an application that does its job well. While a lot of apps for Android try to emulate the iPhone-ish interface, aCar doesn’t. This gives it its own unique look and the interface is very pleasing.

The author of this application accepts donations to unlock some additional features. So you don’t have to depend on the Android Market to get the paid app. The features that are unlocked after the donation are trivial enough to ignore. I am quite certain that people would donate the minimum $5 for the application as it is.

While there are other applications that can do the same thing, it is definitely not enough to just offer the basics. aCar offers a lot more than just basic data storage and retrieval and that is why this is my choice for tracking my fuel and service data. This is definitely an application I can see myself using on a regular basis.

To start with, the frequently used links for Mail, Contacts and Tasks have been moved to the top. This is really useful since the hunting for them can now stop. I always found my self hunting for the “Contacts” link in particular every time I wanted to access that area.

Frequently used links moved to the top of the sidebar. The button for "Compose" added. The UI has also been cleaned up in general to look better.

The Contacts section has also undergone a major change. This was always a sore point for Gmail users, including me. The Contacts section was always really clunky and was difficulty to navigate and manage. Contacts has been overhauled, to say the least. The look is more in line with your Inbox and you can clearly see the labels applied to the contacts and the navigation area in the sidebar. One apparent problem that I did notice, was that if I resized the window in which gmail was open, the window contents (the contacts list screen) took a few seconds to redraw and rearrange itself to the new size.

The contacts now look like your inbox and you can clearly see the labels on the right side.

Navigating the contacts is also a lot easier basis the labels that now appear in the sidebar. I really like the buttons being used for important context defined tasks instead of links as earlier. So when you are in the Inbox, there is a Compose button instead of a link, and when you are in the Contacts, there is a New Contact button instead of a link.

The labels make navigation much easier now in Contacts.

The “Add Contact” screen is also completely redesigned. Although, I can’t seem to be able to find things like “Company” and “Title”. Since I use an android phone, this is where I enter all my contacts and wait for them to sync to the phone. Company name and the person’s title is very important for me since most of my new added contacts are business related.

The new "Add Contacts" screen.

These tweaks were long awaited and have definitely added a lot of usability to the Gmail interface. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

SwiftKey just came into the Android Market with the promise of 50% faster typing speeds.

SwiftKey is one of the on-screen keyboards that just became available for Android devices. It’s released as a time limited beta and the full version is expected soon. SwiftKey is from a company called TouchType and uses their “Fluency” prediction engine which is apparently available in other text entry systems.

SwiftKey is their keyboard for the Android platform and they claim to increase your current typing speed by 50% by predicting the next word that you may want to type. Effectively reducing the number of taps and therefore increasing your typing speed. I installed SwiftKey from the market and used it for the whole day, and here’s what I found.

I am a heavy typer. Throughout the day, I am texting, tweeting and note taking. All of this happens on my phone since I move around a lot and I don’t have access to these social networks in office. SwiftKey is a fairly comfortable keyboard. I could use it throughout the day without a problem, except one really big one. I will come to that a little later. First the good parts.

The word prediction is astounding. It borders on mind reading at times. Although not from the very beginning. It tends to learn, I believe from your typing patterns. It also does a scan of your text messages during setup, which also adds to the learning. The keys are spaced comfortably even on my Samsung Galaxy Spica so I am sure that the sizing will be comfortable for the larger screen phones. SwiftKey consider the center word shown to you in the suggestions to be the most accurate to the context and if you just keep clicking on that center suggestion without any input, you will automatically form a coherent sentence. In my case it was “I am ready to go to the bank for some quick work.” I don’t know whether this will be different for different people on the basis of the learning that the app is able to gain for usage and texts or this is what everyone will be tapping in. The app is also very quick. There is no lag in the touch to type and you can also choose the language that you want to work with for the work prediction.

Now the bad. To get the benefit that SwiftKey can definitely give you, you have to completely change the way you type! Here’s how if felt to me. I type in the first couple of characters of the word that I wanted to type and SwiftKey very predictably, predicts the word and displays the top three choices the the suggestions on the top of the keyboard. I now have to click on the suggestion which I feel is the right one and then move onto the next word, or use the space key or key in a punctuation. While the suggestions are very accurate, I have to consciously stop typing mid-word and let SwiftKey take over. Type 2 characters-Stop-choose suggestion-start next word. It’s a little unnatural for me to do this and I found myself doing this only when the word was of a certain length. for the shorter 4 to 5 letter words I would just type on thorough till the end. The utility, for me, was lost unless the word was a longer one.

So for the time being I and going to be sticking to Swype for my one finger typing need and the standard Android keyboard for the 2 finger typing.

After a lot of browsing the internet, reading reviews on blogs and watching videos on YouTube, I shortlisted my choices down to the Lowepro Fastpack 350 and the Kata DR-467i and finally bought the Kata as made obvious by this post’s title.

Both these backpacks were perfect for my gear. I settled on the Kata since I felt that it looked better and also a couple of additional features that highlighted their attention to detail. Also, the fact that Kata is an Israeli company that makes bags for the Israeli Army, inspires a lot of confidence in their product.

A couple of the things that helped me make up my mind were that with the Kata, I could also carry a good sized tripod strapped to the side of the bag. Also, the Kata came with an all weather cover that gave the whole bag and the gear inside extra protection in bad weather. Other small things that showed their attention to detail were the rubber cups to prevent zipper noise, the reflective thread in the zipper ends for visibility and the ability to easily strap the backpack to any strolley for wheeling around.

The bag easily holds 1 or 2 camera bodies in top grip position, 2 to 3 lenses and additional things like a flash or lens hoods. The bag can also hold a good sized laptop in the dedicated laptop compartment. I easily carry my 15.6” Lenovo widescreen laptop.

Here is a photo tour of the backpack.

This is strictly a budget laptop with very few frills. However, it was a pleasant surprise once I actually got it. Lets cover the basic specifications.

That’s the basics. As you can see, the specifications are fairly normal. However the laptop delivers a lot more value than just what the specifications show you.

Firstly, it has a HDMI port. That in itself gives it a lot more points than I would have originally given it. This is a really nice thing to have in a budget laptop. I can now easily connect to my plasma TV.

Secondly, the screen is huge. Since this is a laptop which is primarily a home laptop, I really wanted the biggest screen available. None of the other laptops had this size of a screen at the same price.

Thirdly, the keyboard is really nice. Having looked at so many laptops in the same price range, all the keyboards had a lot of flex to them. This keyboard doesn’t. It is rock solid.

The design of the laptop is covered in the following pictures.

My Spica is now running 2.1, and I have to say that its not that much of an upgrade. There are still elements of 1.5 that I really liked. The media player was much better in terms of the interface. The Speed of the window manager, Pantheon, is not good in spite of the 800mhz processor. I use Launcher Pro Beta by default. The main benefit is that I have access to a lot more apps than I had before. 1.5 was very quickly losing that race and most of the really nice apps were being developed were for 1.6 and above. However, Google is still not allowing paid apps in India yet. Although an easy way around that is to use third party Market apps like the And App store.

The camera has undergone a massive upgrade. The 1.5 camera application was basic. The 2.1 camera application has more compact camera like functions like preset photo modes, white balance, effects, metering, geo-tagging, timer, digital zooming and ISO adjusting. There is still no native application for image editing, but that’s what the app stores are there for right?

At the other end of the spectrum, the music app is really bad. I have been looking for a really nice music application since the day I got the 2.1 upgrade. MixZing and DoubleTwist (iTunes for Android some have called it) are my current favourites.

One of the widgets that I have always wanted is Power Control. This little widget makes life a lot easier. The Power Control widget allows to to quickly switch states of your wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, auto sync and brightness. Earlier I had to depend on 5 to 6 1×1 widgets to switch these and even then they didn’t have enough permissions to do everything. Power Control solves that and is probably my most used widget.

I am not a very heavy phone user. My Spice is mostly for data. The phone functions are more than adequate. I am especially found of the speaker phone function that is really good and a welcome change from my earlier imate Kjam. Sound quality is great and contacts sync with my Google account ensures that I don’t have to worry about backing those up.

ColorNote is an application that does exactly what it claims to do and it does that very well. The note taking can be in two different formats. You can either write a simple text note in case you want to jot down something that crossed your mind or you can create a checklist or a “to do” list that you can check off as you go along. The notes can be saved in various colors and you can choose this at the time of creating the note. The notes that you create can also be stuck to your home screens as widgets. As soon as you try to add the ColorNote widget, it shows you the list of notes that you have in ColorNote and you can choose the right one at that time.

Highly recommended!

In India, Sony does not provide service for the Alpha range of DSLRs. They just sell the things and provide a 3 year replacement warranty. If you do get a serious irritating problem like dust on your sensor, you really have place to go but to non-authorized service centers where you really can’t be sure of what they will do and whether they are updated about the camera repairs that they carry out. After reading up a lot on the internet on the various DIY sensor cleaning methods that are available, I narrowed it down to Photographic Solutions Sensor Swabs and the Lenspen SensonKlear. I ordered both through ebay US. They didn’t get here. Got stuck in customs or something.

Ebay India has a new service which allows you to buy things from ebay US without worrying about the things that you have to worry about if you order directly from ebay US, like, your package not getting to you at all. Unfortunately the choice of products available via this route are limited and apparently chosen at random. I had to check the listing daily to see if the Sensor Swabs or the Lenspen were listed in the site on any day. The law of averages played its part and the Lenspen SensorKlear got listed on the site. I, of course, bought it immediately.

The package arrived in about 10 days and it was in perfect condition. Since this is a tool meant to be used by the camera owner, there are no guarantees. If you mess up, its on your head. This is what keeps a lot of people away form DIY sensor cleaning. However, most of the DIY methods available are also endorsed by the camera manufacturers and these same methods are used by the people fixing your camera in their service centers. That said, I was pretty scared of doing it myself, but more confident of my own research than a non-authorized service center.

The Lenspen SensorKlear consists of two different brushes. A retractable soft dry brush for cleaning/dusting everything but the sensor. So you can clean your lenses and your mirror and even the prism. The second brush is a triangular, very compact soft brush coated with a completely dry carbon based cleaning compound. The brush is triangular to help clean the corners on sensors. The corners is where a lot of the duct accumulates. The device is very simple and very effective.

The dust that was on my sensor refused to be dislodged by the camera’s in-built sensor cleaning mechanism and also by the blower that I had bought some time ago. So this was the “sticky” kind of dust that is actually sticking to your sensor due to static build up on the surface of the sensor.

This brush does not move the dust particles around like a normal brush, but picks it up off the sensor. What it cant pick up, it turns to “non-sticky” duct which can be blown off with a normal blower.

Considering the amount of time I am saving and frustration I am not feeling during post processing, this has been an excellent acquisition for me. It’s really easy to use and is a must have for everyone’s camera kit.