Transfer Data to Any Android Mobile Without Using Data Cable.

How to Transfer Data to Any Android Mobile Without Using Data Cable?

by Raman

 

There is no doubt about that, now a days 8 out of 10 people use smartphones and 6 out of 10 people use android mobiles. Because those phones which have android operating system are available for less price when compared with other mobiles which have windows mobile operating system and ios. The bitter truth is most of the people having android mobiles but very few of them having USB data cables which are helpful to transfer data from pc to mobile. Some mobile vendors doesn’t provide cables and some other people lost their data cables. Of Course every mobile have Bluetooth connection but the transfer rate from Bluetooth to Bluetooth is very slow.
So here we provide one unique and useful solution to transfer data from pc to android mobile without using any data cable.

How to Transfer Data to Any Android Mobile without Data Cable?

To overcome this problem there is one excellent application which allows you to send and receive files from pc to android mobile. That is Software Data Cable (Pro), by using this application not only transfer from pc to android mobile but also transfer from other devices.
1. To work with this application first you need to download Software Data Cable (Pro) application from Google play Store and install it on your android mobile.

• Download Software Data Cable (Pro)

2. After installing this application just connect to same Wi-Fi network which is already connected to your pc or mac.
3. Now open application and click on “start service” button and it will display an ip address. Note that ip address and paste it on windows explorer.

4. Once you enter this ip address then press enter to see all your mobile folders in your pc.

5. Now just copy the folder or file which one you want to transfer from pc to mobile and paste it on your mobile explorer.(Here mobile explorer means 10.0.2.15, by using this address we connect our mobile to pc).
6. That’s it, in this way we can transfer any file/folder from pc to android mobile but make sure you have Wi-Fi connection.
7. You can also change settings of this application as per your requirements.

Features of Software Data Cable (Pro):

• There is no need to download and install drivers to work with this application.
• Send photos, videos, apps, music and other files to other mobiles, tablets etc.
• You can also auto sync all important data to computer or any cloud storage on daily, weekly basis.
• Transferring speed is too fast with 54Mb/s
• Sync all your important data to cloud storage networks like Microsoft one drive and baidu etc. You can also sync folders and files to laptop, pc or any other file server.
• This is also compatible with windows explorer and other FTP clients like Filezilla.

If you have any doubts while installing and using this application please refer their help guide which comes inbuilt with the application.

Everything About Nokia X

Everything You Need to Be Know About Nokia First Android Mobile Nokia X

March 24, 2014 by Raman Bathina 

 

Every mobile user knows about Nokia which is owned by Microsoft Corporation. There is no need to introduce about Nokia because it had huge popularity and more trustfulness in people. Recently it goes down from the competition because it doesn’t release new products frequently and another main thing is they don’t release any mobile with android operating system. After a long time they released android based mobiles with windows interface. Now they come up with 3 android based mobiles with X series.They are Nokia X, Nokia X+, Nokia XL. Here we discuss about the features of Nokia X which is available for less price in India.

Features of Nokia X:

Download All Android Apps and Games:

They provide store application to download all types of android apps and games but you can’t download these all stuff from Google play because it doesn’t support Google play. Alternatively you can download apps and games from all other app stores like 1mobile, Amazon app store etc. As earlier said they release this mobile with android variant only and all other settings, features come up with Nokia x software platform.

Fastlane:

Fastlane is a unique feature which is introduced on this Nokia X mobile series. It allows you to access all your recent apps, photos and your favorite applications. All these apps and photos are displayed on single screen which is named as Fastlane.

Resize Apps and Home Screen:

In every mobile we can rearrange icons but cannot resize apps. Here you can also resize apps and other icons as your wish, group some kind of apps into one folder that means group all chatting applications in one folder. This customization is newly introduced with this mobile.

Map Navigation:

You can get exclusive maps with Nokia x mobile which are useful while traveling to new place. You can use them offline also, so there is no need of internet to access Nokia Here maps.

Nokia MixRadio:

Nokia MixRadio is the great choice to listen your favorite music without any subscription, advertisement,signup. It delivers new songs every day and mixes based on the artists you love.

Get Free Skype Calls for One Month:

You can get one month free calls to all mobiles and land lines when you purchase Nokia X mobile. To get this you need to download Skype gift app from Nokia app store and redeem your digital voucher code. You need to activate data plan before making free calls through this application.

User Interface:

It had 4 inches screen with 800X480 resolution which supports 16 million colors with 233 pixel density. It have capacitive touch screen facility with two point touch. Ambient, Proximity sensors are available.

Connectivity and Network:

Like other smart mobiles it also have micro sim, it had dual stand by sim. You can transfer data from pc to mobile using Micro USB.It supports both 2G and 3G networks and Wi-Fi function also available with 802.11 b/g/n frequency.

Processor and Memory:

This device comes up with 1GHz Qualcomm snapdragon s4 processor with dual core technology which gives good processing speed while using applications and playing games. If you expect good memory then it will disappointment because they give one 512 MB RAM and 4 GB  internal memory. You can extend memory upto 32 GB using micro sd card.

Camera and Video:

It had 3 MP primary camera with fixed focus and it supports various capturing modes like panorama,video and still. Main camera have some good features like auto white balance, active toolbar, auto exposure, still image editor, face recognition.

What’s in the Box:

The sales box contains Nokia X Dual Sim Mobile, Nokia Battery BN-01  1500 mAh, Nokia Stereo Headset WH-108, High Efficiency Charger AC-20, Quick Guide.

Samsung Gear 2 earns 80% for repairability

Samsung Gear 2 earns high marks for repairability

The smartwatch earned a score of 8 out of 10 from iFixit for repairability

iFixit

Samsung's Gear 2 smartwatch is awfully easy to repair, a new teardown from iFixit has revealed.The folks over at iFixit, who provide teardown treatment on tech and also sells product to help DIYers perform their own gadget surgeries, gave the Gear 2 smartwatch a score of 8 out of 10 for repairability on Wednesday, saying that just about everything but the display was easy to remove.
According to iFixit, the display assembly inside Samsung's recently unveiled smartwatch is fused and then glued to the front of the device, limiting repairability. The device's wristband was easy to remove, however. The same held true for the battery, which could be removed with no tools necessary.
Samsung showed off its Gear 2 smartwatch at Mobile World Congress earlier this year. The device works with Samsung handsets and allows users to make and receive calls, view notifications, and capture photos, in addition to telling time.
That the Gear 2 is easy to take apart and its battery easily removable is to be expected. The device is partly designed to compete with watches people are wearing now, and taking those apart to remove batteries is extremely simple.
In addition to its repairability, iFixit took an inventory of what's under the hood. The company found that the smartwatch comes with a 1GHz dual-core CPU and Samsung's own gyroscope for movement-tracking. Other companies, including STMicroelectronics and Motorola, have components bundled with the smartwatch.
CNET has contacted Samsung for comment on the Gear 2 teardown. We will update this story when we have more information.

Increase Youtube Buffering Speed

How to Increase Youtube Buffering Speed

We all know that Youtube is the best video sharing network with more than 3 Billion views per day.All of us watch youtube videos.But the toughest part comes when youtube videos buffers(Especially when you have a slow Internet connection).In this article I will be sharing some Tips to Increase Youtube Videos Buffering Speed.

On What Factors Does Youtube Buffering Speed Depend?

• Its very simple,youtube videos buffering speed mostly depends on your Internet Speed.

Anyways if you have a slow internet connection then here are some Tweaks using which we can boost youtube buffering speed.

Tips To Speed Up Youtube Videos Buffering:

1.Increase your Internet speed by 20%:

This is a very old trick to Increase your Internet Speed.This trick increases your net speed by 20% which means you are increasing your youtube videos buffering speed as well.
Microsoft windows reserves 20% of your available bandwith for their own purposes like updates and interrogating with your PC etc.This should be undone immediately to enjoy full ISP Speed.

Follow these steps to increase your Internet Speed by 20%:

• Click on start, select run and type “gpedit.msc“.
• select to LOCAL COMPUTER POLICY>COMPUTER CONFIGURATION>ADMNISTRATIVE TEMPELATES>NETWORK> QOS PACKET SHEDULER>LIMIT RESERVABLE BANDWITH.
• Double click on “limit reservable bandwith” and then select “Enabled” snd edit the bandwith to O.

• Its a nice trick…!! try it and get internet speed 20% more..!!

Note:For some versions of windows like windows home and basic versions don’t have gpedit.msc command,in that case just ignore this trick not a big deal and follow the below tricks.

2.Join Youtube Feather Beta:

This is a new Youtube Project called Youtube Feather Beta.
Go to Youtube Feather Beta[this link] and click on join youtube feather beta.Now search for videos and start watching,you should have already found the difference in speeds before and after.

Limitations:

• In youtube feather beta you dont see many comments.
• You will not be able to like or dislike the video.
• You will get only 5 suggested or related videos.

The bandwidth which is used to load these things will be utilised to speed up the videos.If you dont like this version then you can leave youtube feather beta at any time.

3.Use Youtube DNS:

Using Youtube open DNS will help you in speed up the youtube video buffering.

For Windows XP users:

• Go to Control Panel from the Start menu.
• Click on Network Connections from the Control Panel choices.
• Choose your connection from the Network Connections window.
• Click Properties button.
• Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click Properties.

Click the radio button Use the following DNS server addresses and type in OpenDNS addresses in the Preferred DNS server and Alternate DNS server fields.
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

For Windows 7 Users:

• Go to control Panel.
• Click on Network and Internet then click on Network and Sharing Center.
• Click on Change adapter settings(at left side).
• Right Click on Local Area Connection then select Properties button.
• Double click on Internet Protocol version 4 (TCP/IPv4)(dont change any thing in IP address).

Click the on Use the following DNS server addresses and type
Preferred DNS server: 208.67.222.222 and  Alternate DNS server: 208.67.220.220

• Then click ok and its done!

4.Speed up youtube videos Buffering with SpeedBit Video Accelerator:

Not only for YouTube, the software works well with more then 165 video sites like Yahoo Video, Facebook, Aol Video, Myspace, ESPN, and many more . You just need to install the software and it will take care of the rest. The free version works with all the normal videos but for accelerating HD (High Definition) videos you need to upgrade to premium version.

• SpeedBit Video Accelerator[Download from here]

5.Increase Youtube Buffering Speed by changing the Video Quality:

You can also speed up Youtube videos buffering by changing the quality of videos to low quality like 240p,360p etc.Use this when you have to do nothing with the quality of videos.

6.Get a Good Internet Plan with good Net Speed:

With the above tweaks you can speed up your youtube videos  buffering more than thrice but if you really want a very good buffering then getting a good subscription plan with good net speed is a wise thing.
If you follow and apply the above tips properly then you will definitely notice an increase in your youtube buffering speed.Those who have tried let us know your experience in your comments

 

AMD Radeon R9 295X2 graphics card

AMD outs flagship Radeon R9 295X2 graphics card

AMD's latest flagship graphics card sits directly between NVIDIA's rival Titan GPUs
Image Gallery (2 images)

AMD has revealed the Radeon R9 295X2, the flagship card in its latest range of gamer-centric GPUs. The new card features a powerful dual-GPU setup that utilizes factory-fitted liquid cooling and boasts a full 8GB memory. The GPU is aimed to compete with NVIDIA's rival Titan cards.
Unlike console gaming, the benchmark for PC graphics performance is constantly being raised, with the top two manufacturers, AMD and NVIDIA, constantly vying for the top spot. AMD’s Radeon R9 295X2 represents the company’s latest attempt to grab that spot, and while it might not quite dethrone its rival, it does present a tantalizing prospect to deep-pocketed gaming enthusiasts.
In terms of raw specs, the card offers a dual-Hawaii 290X configuration with 8GB GDDR5 memory, providing 11.5 TFLOPs compute power and an impressive 5,632 stream processors. The new card’s GPUs take advantage of the company’s Mantle technology, which allows developers to create more efficient code that speaks more directly to the GPU while lowering CPU workload and reducing bottlenecking issues.
The company claims that the card can handle ultra game settings at full 4K resolution, or can be pushed even further, simultaneously running five high-definition displays for a total resolution featuring an additional two million pixels over 4K. Unlike many current GPUs, the flagship R9 card doesn't feature an HDMI port, but instead opts for a single dual-link DVI and four mini DisplayPorts.

The specs here are undoubtedly impressive, but the card’s powder coated aluminum design and factory-fitted Asetek-developed liquid cooling solution should also help it stand out among the competition. This tech should help the card run cool and quiet under heavy workloads.
The card retails for a substantial US$1,500. That’s a fair bit more than NVIDIA’s $1,100 Titan Black GPU, though the competing card features a less beefy 6GB memory and 2,880 stream processors. In contrast, NVIDIA’s recently announced Titan Z card, which features a full 12GB memory, retails for a massive $3,000.
Other than its high-end price tag, the only major downside of the R9 295X2 appears to be its power hungry nature. The card requires a hefty 500W of power, meaning that most consumers looking to pick up the card should probably start shopping for a beefier power supply as well.
The AMD Radeon R9 295X2 will be available worldwide from April 21.
Source: AMD

Solving iOS Battery Drain

The Ultimate Guide to Solving iOS Battery Drain

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I worked on the Genius Bar for almost two years, and the most difficult issue to solve was short battery life. It was extremely difficult to pinpoint the exact reason why someone's battery was draining.
I made it my mission to discover the specific reasons for iOS battery drainage. This article is a product of my years of research and anecdotal evidence I gathered in the hundreds of Genius Bar appointments I took during my time as a Genius and iOS technician, as well as testing on my personal devices and the devices of my friends.
iOS 7.1 came out recently and brought with it a bevy of design tweaks and performance enhancements. However, some users are reporting poor battery life since the update, and many blogs are reporting it as fact.
This is not one of those "Turn off every useful feature of iOS" posts that grinds my gears. My goal is to deliver practical steps to truly solve your iOS battery woes.
One quick thing before we start — 99.9% of the time it is not actually iOS that is causing your battery to drain quickly. I guarantee you that if you erased your phone and there were no apps or email on it, it would last for ages. But, no one uses their device like that, nor should they. Hopefully with these steps you will be living in iOS battery bliss while still using all the apps and features you love.
But first, we need to test and see if you even have a problem to begin with.

How to Test Your iOS Battery Drain

There is a quick and easy battery life test built into your device, if you do a little bit of math — the Usage and Standby times. Head on over to Settings > General > Usage and check out your times.
Your Usage time is how long you have actually used your device, and the Standby time is how long your device has been dormant in-between the times you've used it. The key to look for is that your Usage time should be significantly lower than your Standby time, unless you have been using your device every single second you've had it unplugged. If this is not the case and your Usage time is exactly equal to your Standby time, you have a severe problem. The bottom line is that your Usage time should be accurate to how much you've used it since you took it off the charger.
So here's the test: write down your usage and standby time, press the sleep/wake button (or lock button, as some call it) to put the device to sleep, and set the device down for five minutes. When you come back, take note of the change in time. If your device is sleeping properly, then the Standby time should have increased by five minutes and your Usage time by <1 minute . If your Usage time rises by more than one minute, you have a drain problem. Something is keeping your device from sleeping properly, significantly shortening the time it will last.
If you do not have a battery drain issue, then great! You don't even need the steps listed in this article. But if you or someone you know is constantly complaining about how short their battery lasts, read onward or send this post to them.
Here are the main causes of iOS battery drain I've found, and how to resolve them.

Step 1: Disable Location and Background App Refresh for Facebook

This first step may seem extremely specific, but that's because it is extremely common and extremely effective. It has also been well tested and confirmed on many devices.
I just got the iPhone 5s about two weeks ago, and thought my battery was draining a little too quickly. Being the nerd that I am, I decided to run the app Instruments from Xcode, Apple's developer tool, in order to see what the problem was. Basically, Instruments acts as an Activity Monitor for your iPhone, allowing developers (or nerds like me) to see every process currently running and how much memory and processing power each app is using in real-time.
During this testing, Facebook kept jumping up on the process list even though I wasn't using it. So I tried disabling Location Services and Background App Refresh for Facebook, and you'll never guess what happened: my battery percentage increased. It jumped from 12% to 17%. Crazy. I've never seen that happen before on an iPhone. The iPod touch exhibits this behavior, to my memory, although I haven't tested it in a while. For the iPhone, the battery percentage is usually pretty consistent.
I have confirmed this behavior on multiple iPhones with the same result: percentage points actually increase after disabling these background functions of Facebook.
Bad, Facebook, bad.

Step 2: Disable Background App Refresh for Apps You Don't Care About

My recent post explains the benefits of Background App Refresh. BAR is an awesome feature added in iOS 7, but you don't necessarily need it running for every app that supports it. Disable Background App Refresh for Facebook or other apps you don't absolutely need to stay up-to-date all the time.
If there are apps you check regularly, and you trust the quality of the app and developer, then enable Background App Refresh with confidence and enjoy your apps being updated intelligently so they're ready for your enjoyment at a moment's notice. Background App Refresh is great if you need it, but you really don't need it for every single app on your iOS device.

Step 3: Stop Quitting Your Apps in Multitasking

iOS 7 made it super fun to close your apps: all you have to do is double-click the home button and swipe up on the app preview to blast it into a digital black hole.
What most people tell you is that closing your apps will save your battery life because it keeps the apps from running in the background.
Wrong.
Yes, it does shut down the app, but what you don't know is that you are actually making your battery life worse if you do this on a regular basis. Let me tell you why.
By closing the app, you take the app out of the phone's RAM . While you think this may be what you want to do, it's not. When you open that same app again the next time you need it, your device has to load it back into memory all over again. All of that loading and unloading puts more stress on your device than just leaving it alone. Plus, iOS closes apps automatically as it needs more memory, so you're doing something your device is already doing for you. You are meant to be the user of your device, not the janitor.
The truth is, those apps in your multitasking menu are not running in the background at all: iOS freezes them where you last left the app so that it's ready to go if you go back. Unless you have enabled Background App Refresh, your apps are not allowed to run in the background unless they are playing music, using location services, recording audio, or the sneakiest of them all: checking for incoming VOIP calls , like Skype. All of these exceptions, besides the latter, will put an icon next to your battery icon to alert you it is running in the background.

Step 4: Disable Push Email Temporarily

If steps 1 through 3 did not solve your problem, try disabling Push email temporarily to see if it helps . Push email allows your device to receive instant notifications every time you get an email. It is great if you need to know when every single email comes in, but does impact battery if configured incorrectly.
I've seen many devices where Push is the primary cause of battery drain, but I've also seen plenty of devices have great battery life with Push enabled. It is really specific to your email and server settings. Try changing the setting to Fetch every hour, thirty minutes, or fifteen minutes and see if the drain stops. If that doesn't help, turn it back on. You could also trying disabling Push on individual accounts if you have multiple. Just keep referring to the test at the beginning of the article to see if that resolved your issue.
Unbelievably often, especially with Exchange push email, it's as if the phone gets stuck in a loop checking for email constantly. When this happens, the phone will usually die within six hours of being off the charger, and the Standby and Usage times in Settings > General > Usage will be exactly the same. These times are not the same because the "firmware is bad or corrupted", it's because push email is keeping the phone from sleeping properly.

Step 5: Disable Push Notifications for Apps That Annoy You

Does that annoying game your child downloaded keep sending you push notifications to keep buying more digital sheep for the virtual farm? If so, every time you get one of those notifications, your phone wakes from sleep for a few seconds to light up your screen and wait for your potential action upon each notification.
Push notifications do not cause excess battery drain by default, so please don't hear me say you need to turn them all off. However, every message wakes your device for 5 to 10 seconds, so it can add up. If you receive 50 notifications during the day and never act on them, that will add 4 to 8 minutes to your Usage time, meaning you now have that much less time to do things you actually want to do on your device.
Turn off those annoying Push notifications for apps you don't need notifications from. It might be a small difference, but it can add up.

Step 6: Turn Off Battery Percentage

That's right, you heard me.
Turn off that battery percentage meter and stop worrying about your battery drain. You can find this setting in Settings > General > Usage, right above where your battery times are listed.
One thing I found in my Genius Bar experience is that people that are anxious about their iOS device battery life are constantly checking it to see the percentage and how much it has dropped from the last time they checked it. So if you check your device twice as much, simply to check on the battery life, you are essentially halving the time your device will last.
Stop freaking out and enjoy your life. There are more important things to worry about than your device's battery life. The control freak inside you might freak out the first few days you do this, but you'll get used to it.

Step 7: Go to an Apple Retail Store

Update: I was informed after posting this that the Apple battery test only runs on the iPhone 5 and up.
I know, you hate making a Genius Bar appointment because it's loud and crazy in there, but I have a good reason to add this to the list.
According to my sources, Apple has rolled out a new 'Extended Battery Life Test' for all iOS technicians that allows them to see a detailed report of battery usage on your device. It takes only a few minutes to run and, from what I've heard, is comprehensive. I have not had a chance to see this test for myself, but my friends tell me it rocks.
The other rare possibility is that your physical battery is defective, and the technicians can replace it for free if your iOS device is under warranty, or very cheaply if it's not.

Step 8: Enable Airplane Mode in Areas of Poor Cellular Service

One major reason your battery could be draining too quickly is poor cellular service. When the iPhone detects that you are in a place of low signal, it will increase the power to the antenna in order to stay connected enough to receive calls (primarily) and maintain a data connection.
This will destroy your battery life if you are constantly in a location with 1 bar or no service at all. The unfortunate thing is that this can happen in more places than you expect — any building with metal studs in the walls, aluminum buildings, buildings with dense concrete walls, heavily populated city areas, and downtown areas with with lots of tall buildings.
Often times you may get a strong signal on the top floor of a building, but simply moving to a lower floor, such as the basement, will immediately cause your iPhone to hang on to signal for dear life at the expense of your battery. Note that this severe drain will happen even if you have a strong Wi-Fi connection, because your phone still needs the cellular connection for calls and SMS messages (the green-colored texts in the Messages app).
If you are in an area with poor cell coverage, and you still need to receive calls, I've got bad news — there is really nothing you can do. But if your service is so poor that you can't receive calls anyway, I recommend turning on Airplane mode by swiping up from the bottom of your device to access Control Center and tapping the Airplane icon.
One thing you may not know about Airplane mode: you can actually turn Wi-fi back on after enabling Airplane mode. Just tap the Wi-Fi button in Control Center (the icon directly to the right of the Airplane). This is perfect for places, like an airplane, where you have zero cellular coverage but a strong Wi-Fi signal.
If you have Wi-Fi and want to be really fancy, you can disable just the cellular data portion of your signal, e.g. EDGE, 3G, 4G, or LTE. Most people don't know that your phone is actually receiving two signals simultaneously: one for calls and SMS, and one for data.
The signal strength meter on the iPhone only shows the signal strength for the non-data connection, which means theoretically your iPhone could show 2-3 bars (or dots on iOS7) for your 1x connection but in reality you could be getting 1 bar of LTE/4G/3G connection, causing the phone to go into heavy search mode. To disable just the Data connection of your iPhone, head over to Settings > Cellular Data and switch Cellular Data off. Again, doing this will allow you to receive phone calls (if you still have a signal) while maintaining a data connection through Wi-Fi.

Conclusion

I guarantee you that if you follow these steps, you will be getting the best battery life possible out of your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
If your device is still not lasting you a full day, and you can't stomach heading into one of the stainless steel noise chambers I lovingly refer to as your nearest Apple Retail Store, don't worry. There is still hope for you.
The reason your device isn't lasting all day might simply be because you are a heavy user, and your iOS device is acting completely normal under the grueling pace with which you use it. That is not a fault of the device, or you, for that matter. You are simply pushing it beyond it's capabilities. My advice for you is to buy a car charger, a second charger for travel/work, or a battery case to extend your battery life .
I hope this article empowers you to stop stressing about your battery life, and frees you up to enjoy the great device in your hands. There are more important things in life that deserve our attention, so the more we minimize the trivial stressors, like bad battery life, the more time we can spend on people and problems that really matter.

Footnotes

1. Users will report poor battery life after every iOS update. Always. For eternity. This is not newsworthy. 
2. This only works on the iPhone and iPod touch. Sorry iPad users, for some reason these times are not viewable. **Update** Reader Timothy Fultz emailed in to let me know that iPads on iOS 7 do have these Standby and Usage times. Thanks Timothy! 
3. Sometimes the Usage time will go up by one minute, but really it was only a few seconds. The minute was close to changing, and those few seconds pushed it over the edge to the next minute. 
4. Settings - Privacy - Location Services ↩
5. Settings - General - Background App Refresh 
6. Note about battery percentage: it is an estimate of how long your device will last looking at the amount of charge left in the physical battery and comparing that to the current processes draining that bank of electrical charge.
   A good thing to compare the way iOS calculates battery percentage is ETA (estimated time of arrival) in modern GPS and navigation. Most devices look at the miles left to travel and compare that to the speed limits of all of the roads you are going to travel on your current route. If you drive faster than the speed limit, you will get there faster than the estimated time, so it's not 100% accurate.
   Battery percentage estimates work the same way, looking at the amount of juice left (miles) versus how fast you're draining it (miles per hour). That explains why disabling Facebook made the percentage go up, much like how if you stop on a road trip, your ETA climbs significantly.
   
7. short for Background App Refresh, not the awesome Browning Automatic Rifle used in World War II and by Steve McQueen in the final scene of "The Sand Pebbles". 
8. Temporary, short-term memory. 
9. Internet phone calls. 
10. Apps that can make or receive calls, like Skype, Viber, Tango, Whatsapp, and Facebook are able to check for incoming calls without notifying you. I believe these types of apps sometimes abuse this exception and could have possibly influenced Apple to add Background App Refresh as the sanctioned method for this type of behavior.
    I think this is why disabling Facebook's background services is so influential on battery life: I speculate they are abusing the fact that they have VOIP call features to run in the background more than they should. It would provide a better experience for people using Facebook, sure, but people would never know Facebook was the cause of their battery life issues, and would definitely blame the device or iOS itself.
    
11. Settings - Mail, Contacts, and Calendars - Fetch New Data 
12. The foundational software connecting hardware and software. 
13. That number may seem small, but over a year (x365) that number turns into 1,460 minutes (about a day) to 2,960 minutes (about two days) less battery life. 
14. I really wish Apple had a "No battery percentage meter except under 20%" setting, so bad. That would be my ideal configuration. 
15. Or buy a second iPhone as your night phone ;) 

March 27, 2014

Agony of an African Programmer

Working as an independent mobile, web and software developer in Africa can be a trying experience.
Africa for so long has being recognized by the world as an agricultural continent and for the past decade many software developers (African Code Kings) are working tirelessly to prove that we are also a technological continent by building great websites, mobile apps and software that aims to solve our problems on the ground.
This does not come at a cheap cost. We live in an environment that tech equipment costs two to four times than what it does in Europe and North America, where technical books are almost non-existent in most parts of the continent, and where most people do not have credit cards to purchase from Amazon. Add to that, a good number of African countries have been blacklisted from PayPal.
In Africa there is a perception problem though, some people still think technology comes in a box like a camcorder, computer, laptop, iPad and so on.

We need to all visualize technology as a process and something we are going to build ourselves here in Africa.

I have listed below a few of the agonies myself and most developers go through as African Code Kings.

Load Shedding

Infamous load shedding - a practice of cutting off electricity to whole sections of the city in order to conserve power in countries such as Ghana and South Africa, to name a few.
They never mind that you need electricity to work and you need to work to eat. Nowadays, in Ghana, things are much better - they just cut off electricity without any warning whatsoever or the power fluctuates crazily and the electricity corporation thinks that is entirely normal.
With this load-shedding factor you can rest assured that most developers, especially in Ghana and Nigeria, cannot meet their deadlines.

High Internet Cost

Internet bandwidth has been my major problem since I decided probably six years ago to venture into software and web development.
There is no special data packages that I know of that are being sold to developers who consume huge amounts of data.
Telecommunication companies forget that the internet possesses a huge amount of informative data that can be used as a powerful tool for boosting economic growth and poverty reduction.

Investment

Most developers set up a tech start-up in search for investors to fund their projects. In Africa, most people do not understand the Silicon Valley style of Angel investment and funding.
In Africa, my observation is that most so-called tech-investors, when they fund a start-up they are looking for short term profits.
For good developers who believe they don't need funding, they work their ass out trying to bootstrap their personal projects. They end up taking up so many odd web dev jobs that will in turn slow down their personal projects and innovations.

Salary Factor

It takes a lot of guts and zeal for a good African developer to turn down job offers and internships to pursue his passion.
Once the money sets in, the developer tends to slow down in innovating and instead works hard to better the firm or company he's working in and to gain more promotions.
A web and software developer in Africa earns from $10,000 to $20,000 dollars per annum whereas their colleagues in Europe and the US earns at least $100,000 dollars per year. You could be working hard to build great technologies that can help you rack in tons of thousands dollars when you are a tech-preneur.
Next time if you want to be comfortable with such a job, think again?
I personally turned down a lot of internship and job offers when I came home for the long vacation and I have learnt so much and earned so much recognition for a small I.T start-up Oasis Websoft which I started.
I am currently changing from being just a developer into a great business man. Every day I meet great techies who work for huge tech companies but they would have been better off as entrepreneurs building great technologies for Africa.

Jack of All Trades and Master of None

It is difficult to find a team who believe in the same vision for them join a start-up in Africa.

You will realize that there are so many developers and startups building similar apps instead of coming together in the spirit of free and open source development to build one great app.

An African developer tries to play all the roles in a company from being the CEO to the company’s publicist. Instead of focusing on one thing and mastering the art.
He spends his time mastering all the aspects of a company. It is sometimes good but it comes with its own banes.
It is also great for a developer to understand all the roles but it will be best if he can focus on one lead role and be a master of it. So in one start up we could have a developer, user interface designer, two top coders and one marketing guy.

School

Each month a horde of new programmers, freshly trained out of Universities and professional ICT institutions graduate with impressive looking subjects, certificates ,degrees etc.
They claim to have skills in Java, C++, C, Php, JavaScript, COM, Oracle, SQL, HTML and MS Office. The problem is that, though the syllabus looks good and would be a good starting point for being a software and web developer, these students do not spend time working on their personal projects and instead code for a grade “A” in exams.
Bottom line: These guys are less than half-baked and cannot do productive work. Those who get jobs afterwards land more technical jobs like computer administrators, hardware jobs and so on.
Instead utilizing the methodologies they learnt in programming and so on. Companies who hire them for such jobs do not realize that these guys can actually build software to make their work a lot easy.
It is time for Africans to believe that software is actually something we can create for ourselves.

Awards and Competitions

There's a difference between winning technology awards & competitions versus winning in the marketplace.

The sooner African developers and start-ups recognize this, the better.
It is great to participate in code competitions and hackathons to test your coding skills but it is a different ball game if you want to build kick-ass technology to solve real life African problems and make money along the way.
It is also high time our governments start to stand firmly behind young African men and women developers who are always up at dawn working on something they believe in.
It is not enough to congratulate them vocally of their achievements, it will be right if you can support them with your resources be it financially, intellectually, skills and much more.

Moral Of The Story

System.out.println (“ It's not easy being an African software developer. Don't give up and always Ask God for directions. Use the right technologies for the right tasks. The future of the African software industry lies in enabling the scattered bunches of individual hobbyist programmers. Those people who would be coding even if it didn't pay because that is what they like doing. People like that should be given a chance, should be given work to do, encouraged to stick it out. When there are enough programmers around and working as a programmer is a viable occupation that can buy a car and build a house, the industry will have grown up. Until then, it is dog eat dog -- monkey go work, baboon go chop...
“);
Learn to appreciate the rainbow after cursing the rain. It's just like loving again after experiencing the pain!

by Raindolf Owusu