Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Farewell Google Reader

I can't believe this day has come, but it is here. Last March Google announced that it was going to power down Google Reader. One of its classic spring cleanings. Tons of posts and news talked about it. At the beginning I couldn't believe it but then kind of understood it. Let's be honest not so many people know about RSS and specially RSS clients. These days most people get their news from twitter, G+, FaceBook, etc. I could even say that mostly geeks use RSS and RSS clients now a days in order to get informed, I do :)

Anyways, I woke up this morning and I knew that it was gone but as usual I went to that page and I saw this image :( pretty much the same info you could see on their official blog post

Google Reader

Basically, it says good bye, some other alternatives we can use and that we have until July 15, 2013 to take all our data using Google Takeout.

I still remember the first time I talked about RSS feeds and clients back in 2006 ( Spanish ) since then I pretty much used Google Reader for this purpose but now that it is gone I have been testing couple of alternatives. I am saying alternatives because there is no replacement for it at least according to me. The first in the line is Feedly which has an android client, it uses AppEngine and it has direct import from Google Reader, so far it is good but still it is missing key things for me. It does not have search, for some reason it only shows me feeds just 10 days old, Google Reader used to show one month and I am trying to get used to the UI which sometimes freezes when I go through my feeds. I think it is not scaling very well when you have tons of feeds and users hitting your app, but it uses AppEngine so I guess it is not a server problem. The other alternatives are just not there yet, or do not have android clients which is one of the key things a good RSS client has to have.

Anyways, life has to continue so good bye Google Reader, for sure you will be missed! 

October 7, 2005 to July 1, 2013

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Google Glass

I can finally talk about this!!!!! Last year Google officially revealed Google Glass with an amazing demonstration during Google I/O . They also opened the registration to whoever wanted to get an early device and be a part of a feedback group for this product. Obviously, I signed up and I got a "number".


Then, early this year, all the Google Glass members got an invitation, if approved, to participate in a 2 day hackaton in New York or San Francisco. I chose New York. All excited I went there ready for everything!

Google NY
And it was amazing! each one of us got a pair of these new Google Glasses so we could create any applications we wanted! Of course, there were lots of restrictions, legal documents to sign, credentials, etc etc in summary the security was really really strong and it makes sense, no body likes leaks specially on this new technology/gadget.

During those 2 days I met great developers ( one of them helped me on developing a demo we presented the second day ), saw amazing ideas, concepts, applications and most of all I got the chance to learn, use and meet the creators of this amazing product. I even had the chance to build and demo an application and I got a new Glass brick this time with the word Pioneer :)


By the end of the second day I was tired and sleepy but really really happy. Just having the feeling of being part of the future, being able to test it out, write some lines of code and see it on the device was something I can't describe.
Google Glass :)
I just wish I could talk about more about the tools, the applications and how we built our applications, but I guess that will have to wait a little bit longer.

Meanwhile, I leave you with this video explaining how does feel using glass and believe me it is a complete different experience :)