Triplicate Thoughts

If you were to read any article about Google+ on the web, chances are the article would compare Google+ to Facebook, and call it a failure due to how big the gap in user base is. If you were to ask any random guy on the street about Google+, chances are they wouldn't even know what it is. But if you ask someone who actually uses Google+ on a daily basis what they think of it, I'm confident that they will say it's the best social network there is. That's the problem with many of these "Google+ is dead" articles floating all over the web; they are written by people who don't use the network. How can you ask someone who doesn't use a product what they think of it? It just doesn't make sense. I've given many reasons why I like Google+ more than Facebook but in this post, I'll focus on the real reason why Google+ is better than Facebook - content.

One thing you'll notice from following me on social media is that I like to post about technology. A lot. I have a few interests which I am quite passionate about, but I post the most about technology. Not necessarily because I'm most passionate about it compared to my other interests, but more so because of how prevalent technology is in our daily lives. I mean think about it. How much of what we do on a daily basis is done with the aid of technology? How much has our lives been made more convenient thanks to technology? I consider myself quite tech savvy, and so I try my best to share what I know with my friends and family. To me, it's such a shame if you don't use technology to its fullest, especially when it comes to smartphones. Since we carry our smartphones with us everywhere we go every single day, to not use it to its full potential is such a waste. So here are a few stories of how I use technology in my daily life which will hopefully give you some ideas o...

There's a huge market for streaming digital content. The music industry for example has seen a huge shift in how people listen to their favourite songs. With on-demand music streaming seeing a 60.5% increase, while digital track and album sales dropped by 12.5% and 9.4% respectively in 2014 compared to 2013, it's clear people prefer to stream their music rather than download it onto their devices. The same trend can be seen with video streaming as Netflix's subscriber base has continuously grown every quarter since 2011 up until 2015. So it was only a matter of time until someone came along and announced a similar service for us here in Malaysia. Enter iflix , an on-demand video streaming service born right here in Malaysia, targeting the South-East Asian market. I've tried out the service on a two-week free trial and based on what I've seen so far, iflix can be a huge hit, which is why I'm subscribing to the service. If you're on the fence about tr...

About three months ago, I wrote an article explaining why  Telegram is a better messaging service compared to WhatsApp . It did quite well, and quickly shot up to be my third most popular post of all time. As a quick recap, the reasons I mentioned were faster and more frequent updates, Telegram is cloud-based which allows it to be used on multiple devices simultaneously and also allows users to store shared media in the cloud rather than on devices, usernames as a way to connect instead of phone numbers, and the ability to send files. I never planned to write another article on the issue, but Telegram just has so many benefits over WhatsApp, a single article wouldn't be sufficient. So here are five more reasons why Telegram is better than WhatsApp, and why you should make the switch.

Yes, you read that right. This is my third post on why I like Google+ more than Facebook. I wrote the first two a very long time ago, in 2013 in fact. But Google+ has changed a lot since then, and there are more reasons why I still enjoy the social network very much. Definitely a lot more than Facebook. You can read up on part one  and part two  if you like. If not, here's a quick recap of what I wrote about in the first two posts. Part one was about the concept of Google+ circles, GIF support, text formatting, the mobile app, and the notification system. Part two was about the new posts label, the ability to easily reply to comments, the built-in photo editor, automatic hashtags, and the dynamic card layout. Despite what some sites will have you believe, Google+ is not dead , nor is it dying. In fact, Google recently bought Odysee , an online photo backup and sharing app, and the team was immediately merged into the Google+ team. So if anything, Google+ is alive and kick...

Source There are two kinds of people in the world - those who argue over whether Android or iOS is better, and those who don't. I'm in the former group, though I tend to stay away from mindless name-calling fanboy fights and reserve my energy for more, mature conversations. When geeks get together and discuss/argue about iOS and Android, most of the conversation revolves around, well, geeky stuff. Open source vs closed, custom ROMs and kernels, sideloading app APKs, etc. Mostly stuff that the average consumer either knows nothing about, or just doesn't care about. But even if we leave out all the technical arguments, there are still quite a few reasons why I believe Android is better than iOS. Things that even the average consumer can understand and appreciate. You see, while we geeks argue over all the technical stuff, at the end of the day it's the user experience which determines how good a platform really is. And you don't need to be a tech enthusiasts to u...

Messaging apps are some of the most popular among smartphone users. Three of the top five free apps in the Play Store are messaging apps, and there are many more as well. When it comes to sheer user base, none can boast a higher number of users than WhatsApp. As of August 2014, WhatsApp reports a total of 600 million active monthly users . WeChat is second by a huge 132 million user margin. But as in other markets, just because something is the most popular, doesn't mean it's the best. WhatsApp will always benefit from being one of the earliest cross-platform messaging apps in the market. They've had years to build up their massive user base, and as long as they have that, competing apps will find it difficult to get a foothold in the market. The problem newer messaging apps face is that not many people will use a service if none of their friends and family are. What good is a messaging app if you don't have anybody to send messages to? Telegram is very young compared...

If you are any level of a Google power user, even a "light" power user, you'll probably already know all of the things I'm about to share. But it's quite surprising really, just how many of my friends and colleagues are unaware of the perks of owning a Google account. Some of them don't even know what a Google account is , or that they have a Google account. So before we move on, if you have a Gmail account, or if you use Android, you have a Google account. In case anyone wasn't sure. One of the greatest strengths of having (and using) a Google account is the connectivity we can enjoy. We can have multiple devices in our arsenal  - a smartphone (or two), a tablet, and a desktop/laptop, but thanks to our Google account, all our devices will always be connected. And if you use iDevices don't worry, you can have a Google account on your devices as well. There are many benefits of connecting our devices with our Google account, and here are just a few of ...

Image: Android Guys I'm not the kind of guy who makes resolutions when new year's comes along. Quite frankly I think the whole concept is silly. I mean, why wait until the turn of the year if you want to be a better person? If you really wanted to better yourself, you would do so then and there. But I digress. The reason why I'm writing this post despite my previous statement, is because I just got my Nexus 5 . With a new device comes new opportunities to change your mobile habits. We are often restricted by our devices when it comes to what we can do. If we have a device with poor loudspeakers, we won't be listening to music much without earphones. If our device has a mid-range SoC, we won't be playing graphic intensive games. A poor camera, not a lot of photos. You get the point. Now some of my "resolutions" may not be directly related to, or a consequence of me owning a Nexus 5, but cover a broader scope of how I aim to improve my mobile habits. A...

Social media is taking over news reporting. Image: Lab42 Ever since the turn of the millennium, social media started picking up pace. With various social networks for various situations, more and more adaptation by famous institutes and governing bodies, and of course the rise of smartphones and tablets in consumer markets, social media became huge . Seeing cat videos, pictures of food and cheesy inspirational quotes does get boring, like really boring. But the strength of social media is seen the most in moments of misfortune. I pretty much never read a newspaper anymore. Nor do I watch the news. If you know me, you'll know how much of a technophile I am. Pretty much everything I do, I do online. That includes getting updates on current events, local or global. Whenever there's a missing child in Malaysia, or natural disaster strikes somewhere in the country, or a robbery or murder has been committed ( like this which happened in a neighbouring housing area to mine ), soc...

Image: Social Media Examiner Social media is huge. There's no way to deny that. The turn of the 21st century will probably go down in history as the time when social media began taking over the world. Now, social networking as a concept is nothing new. Back in the day there were many social networks pre-Facebook. I'm sure many of you reading this remember Myspace and Friendster. At the time, those networks were huge in their own way. But the growth of social media today, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+, is unlike anything ever seen before. Hundreds of millions of people use these social networks monthly, and the amount of traffic these sites get is just astounding. So what's the deal? Why is social media suddenly so huge today? Well it's probably a combination of a few key factors, which I plan to discuss in this post.

Image: zmags Things have changed over the past few years with regards to how we go about using technology in our daily lives. Before the age of smartphones, our computers and laptops were entirely separate entities from our dumbphones . What we did on our computers stayed on our computers, and what we did with our phones stayed on our phones. Of course, with the exception of certain business-minded individuals whose BlackBerrys were at the time, considered smart due to their ability to handle e-mail. Things have changed now. What we used to only be able to do on a computer can now also be done on a smartphone, and what we have on our phones can also be accessed from our computers. The barriers between desktop computers and the mobile computers we carry in our pockets have been knocked down. We now live in a multi-screen environment , and that doesn't seem like slowing down anytime soon.

Google sure has grown as a company. What started out as a research project conducted by two Stanford University students is now quite possibly, one of the largest forces behind the internet today. What started our as merely a search engine, is now the driving force behind one of the most successful companies in history. It's quite astonishing how a company who got its start in just one area - providing an internet search engine - now has so many different products for all different types of purposes. If you ever need an online service, chances are Google have your back. Need an e-mail client? Gmail. Need to learn how to cook? I'm sure there are videos on YouTube. Want to see what the fastest route is from A to B? Google Maps. Need a tool to help you and your colleagues work on collaborative documents? Google Drive. Chat service? Hangouts. Internet browser? Chrome. And as always, if you need to find information, Google Search is the best way to go.  The list just goes on.  I p...

Image: Live A few weeks ago, I was in my office minding my own business when these two ladies came in. They were salespeople and so I reluctantly allowed them to give me their pitch. If they were selling something I actually wanted, I might have actually paid attention. Instead, I spent the 15 minutes they spent talking thinking of how I would politely decline their offer after they were done with their pitch. After it was all said and done, I learned that I wasn't the first victim of the day. Several of my friends also had visits from the same salespeople, and they too were unmoved by their sales pitch. It had been a while since I had to deal with salespeople, so this was like a reminder as to how I feel about salespeople in general - I find them annoying. Now this isn't anything personal I have against the people themselves, it's the profession that I find annoying. Forcing themselves into your daily schedule, sometimes even bothering you at home, trying to sell some...

Image: ZDNet I've only been using Android for just over a year now. During the first few months I was mostly on my own, until a few months ago when I started being active on Google+ and in Android communities, joining discussions (and often debates) with other Android users, helping out with answering questions, asking a few of my own and so on. During my time in these communities, I've noticed some patterns in what we as a community of Android users tend to say over and over again. Stuff that gets repeated so many times it's almost like we should have permanent posts in each community so users won't post the same stuff again, like sticky threads in forums . I like to think that Android users are of a higher  level than users of other platforms, but with hundreds of millions of Android users in the world, there are bound to be some goofballs. Here's some $h!t that Android users say.

Image: Android Invasion Apple have gone through a rough time lately. Ever since Steve Jobs passed away, the company has been criticised, ridiculed and mocked from almost every direction. I should know, I've been a very vocal critic of Apple since I switched to Android. But can you blame me? Apple have made it so easy to criticise them. iOS7 while a welcome change for all current iOS users, is nothing more than a theme and icon change (which is something Android users can do on their own), with some added functionality that has been present on other platforms for a long time. Their iOS line of devices has gone from setting market trends to following them. The iPhone 5 was given a 4" screen to compete with the larger Android flagships which people loved, the iPad Mini was released after seeing how successful smaller Android tablets can be, and we might see a mid-ranged iPhone 5c this year to compete with the army of affordable Android smartphones. Apple are no longer leadi...

Many of us nowadays get information from the world wide web. Be it educational information, entertainment gossip, political scandals, sports news, editorials or opinion articles, or even some new recipes we want to try, the internet is probably the most informative and knowledge-laden place in the world. But with so much information at our disposal, we often times find ourselves unable to consume all this information at any particular time. We may browse our favourite news aggregator or RSS feeds for interesting stories across various fields, but we may not have time to read all of them at that time. We could be preparing to go to work or school. We might only have a few minutes in the train. Or even while stuck in a jam. We could of course try to remember those articles we want to read and find them again later when we have some time to spare, but how reliable can our memory actually be in these situations? Thankfully for us, Pocket is an app that does all the remembering for us. ...

This is not how you use a smartphone. Image: Business Insider Yesterday, Google released the new Nexus 7 along with Android 4.3, among other things. But apart from announcing new products, Google also shared some interesting statistics. Among them, the Play Store has now surpassed the 1 million app mark, and has seen 50 billion downloads . Another interesting fact is that in the past year, the number of online videos that have been viewed on a smartphone or tablet have increased by 2.7x . Taken together, these stats suggest that we truly are in a mobile computing era. No longer are we bound to our desktops and laptops. More and more people are buying smartphones, and tablet sales have steadily increased as well. PC sales have dwindled since 2012 , and that truly signifies the transition to mobile computing. But between smartphones and tablets, transitioning from an old dumbphone to a smartphone can be a bit more challenging than using a tablet for the first time. Even though mode...

When is a phone too big to be a phone? Image: CNET Over the years, w e have continually changed our definition of what an acceptable screen size is for a smartphone. The original iPhone with a 3.5" screen was the gold standard in 2007, but in 2013 a 3.5" smartphone is just pitiful (sorry iPhone 4s-and-earlier owners). 4.3" was then the accepted size, then it grew to 4.7"-4.8", and now most flagships come with 5" screens and are well accepted. Samsung pushed the boundaries with the original Note, which surprisingly was a great success. Samsung proved that there are people who enjoy using large phones.  As a result of this, many other manufacturers have joined the large smartphone market, most recently Sony.  They recently unveiled the gargantuan  6.4" Xperia Z Ultra . That's just 0.6" smaller than a 7" tablet. If Samsung blurred the lines between phone and tablet, what Sony are now doing is borderline insanity.  Has the smartphone ma...

Smartphones and tablets have really come a long way. They are now highly capable of performing almost every task the average consumer would use them for. Taking and viewing pictures, writing and editing documents, recording and watching videos, all can be done without a hitch. I view smartphones and tablets as more of an extension of our computers. Things we would usually do exclusively on our computers can now also be done on our mobile devices. While this is a great convenience for people who are always on the move and aren't always in front of their computers, it does pose another problem; file management. With so many different devices, how do we manage all our files? Do we constantly need to be plugging in our phones and tablets to our computers to copy and paste files? Do we need to email ourselves a document from our work computer so we can access it at home? What if we leave the house having forgotten to transfer a document into our tablet that we needed for work? We could...