Four different teams combined together to break the 10% improvement for movie rating predictions. They currently show 10.05% improvement over Netflix’s own solution. According to the rules, there is a one month period until Jul 26, 2009, for anyone to submit a prediction that will be considered for the prize. I think many more teams might now try to blend together their results.

I updated recently my Android developer phone to Android version 1.5. The images and instructions were available from HTC. The update was very easy to do and took less than 30 minutes. There were lots of improvements. Video recording is a notable feature. Camera starts much faster. I like the changes in call log. Earlier I managed to make an unintentional call from the call log almost every other day. Now they have clearly added a call icon to the left and the actual contact to the right. This alone saves me a lot of head ache. The on-screen keyboard is some times useful when you want to type text using one hand. But I found it much harder to type without mistakes. The keys are too small for my finger. A stylus is needed to accurately press the keys. It is always much easier to use the keyboard.

The battery meter seems to be broken. When the phone is being charged it seems to take forever to get to 100%. Before the update it took less than 2 hours to get to 100%. I tried disabling various features like wifi and GPS without any effect on the charging speed. I finally turned off the phone when it was around 70%. When I turned the phone back on immediately it showed 100%. I need to find a solution to this problem. I am also not sure whether the charge is lasting longer. But many people at XDA developers forum who have noticed the same problem claim to have longer lasting charge in 1.5.

I wish the music player app had a way to create your own playlist. I can’t seem to find a way. The players found in the market seem to have lots of features. But all I need is a simple player where I can define my own playlist.

If there was a face off with some one with another smart phone, I could claim earlier that I had super user access on the phone with the Terminal client. Now with 1.5 that is gone. You can get it only with USB connection as a security precaution. Still I like to have a phone were I control almost everything. You do not want to buy a house where the seller controls the door and decides who gets in.

Some menu choices seem to be slightly different for the browser. Other than that I do not see any visual difference. I do not have a data plan. So I have not yet tried GPS services, the new home screen widgets or speech recognition. I also loved the way the phone worked with web. I got a phone number in yahoo email. When reading the mail in the browser the phone number was highlighted. When I touched it the dialer opened and from there I could add the number as a new contact. I was actually looking for a pencil to write down the phone number and then add it to the contacts by opening it separately. Interfaces are supposed to work like that. This feature was probably there in Android 1.0 itself. I wish Android came with built-in Exchange push support like I-Phone.

You can check out the full Release features for 1.5 at http://source.android.com/release-features.

Calling cards must be a cut throat business. I have been using them for a long time to call India from USA. The rates are now nearly 10 times lower since I came to USA. I did use Reliance India call when it first started. I think it was around 10c per minute when it started. Then I switched to pingo which offered around 6c per minute. Currently this is 4.5c/minute. I also briefly used linq when the rate was around 5c. Now I switched to Pinless where the rate is 2.2c for mobile and 2.5c for landlines. The quality is good and the lines are available most of the time.

Recently some one pointed to me to Airtel Call Home which advertised 1c per minute. When I looked at the page their idea of the price calculation of 1c looks ridiculous. It goes roughly like this. You charge $x amount. Then you subtract an arbitrary $y from that. Then you calculate the rate per minute using ($x-$y)/total minutes. They call $y as the rental fee. You can make this any amount so that your final rate comes out as 1c per minute. Why do I care how much is $y? This is bad business practice. If their service is good they should be able to put $x/total minutes which is the real rate I am getting for the money I pay. Reliance India Call also seem to be following this practice and has put in a 1c per minute feature. Reliance calls their $y as administrative fee.

It may be just a marketing tactic and did made me notice their site. But I got back with a bad impression and I will think twice before buying anything from Airtel or Reliance. Who knows what other hidden charges might be there in their fine print.

A friend of mine used to read news very frequently. Whenever he gets some time in front of the computer he will visit news sites. I used to make fun of him. Now I am also becoming a news addict. I visit news aggregator sites several times a day. I have subscribed to several RSS feeds at Google Reader.

With multiple RSS feeds there is always the problem of reading duplicates reported in multiple places. A popular story almost always appears in all the aggregators on the top.

I read slashdot regularly. I tried Digg when it started. But then I slowly switched to other sites because many of the top stories did not match my interests.

I also look at RSSmeme and Techmeme now and then. But Hacker News seems to be the one which matches almost 90% of my interests. I tend to open almost all the stories in the front page in different tabs and then spend the next 30 or so minutes reading those stories. Hacker news is getting very popular these days with increasing site traffic. I hope it doesn’t become like Digg with few users taking over what appears on the top stories list. I also check out BlogRunner some times. But recently it does not seem to be updated as much. Read Write Web is good for everything related to web technology.

When Alltop started it was an interesting place to find new sites. But it has lots of drawbacks. It was frustrating, after a while to visit that site regularly. Alltop is a directory. It cannot be visited regularly for reading news. Using it to check the RSS feeds is just annoying. There is way too much repetition on one page. Even if you get rid of many of the feeds they keep filling the categories with new sites. For me 10 top feeds in one category is good enough. More than 50 feeds in one page in one category is too much.

Among the many regular news websites there are very few whose presentation is good. I like New York Times the best. It has easy to read format, great font, good contrast and good sized text with not too annoying ads. Many tech sites have a single narrow column with one or two words per row with annoying flashing ads in between the text. Some good websites are New York Times, International Herald Tribune and Reuters. I also check Google News regularly. While checking Google News if I wanted to read some news article, I pick the above mentioned websites first if the article is available from them.

For India related news, I have subscribed to RSS feed from Rediff. Compared to their website their RSS feed is heaven. There is just the headline and some times two lines about the news. This is good enough for me to keep up to date on what is going on. Most stories are useless and can be quickly skipped based on the headlines. Their website is very cluttered and they also display pop-up ads if you click on the site anywhere. They seem to ignore the traffic through the RSS feeds currently. Before long I think it will be filled with Ads.

The following are the sites I visit regularly.
Hacker News
Read Write Web
Slashdot
RSSMeme
TechMeme
Google News

I have been looking for full Microsoft Exchange support for Android for a while. Right now there is only limited support. There are lots of projects for exchange support. Many of which are still in the works.

There is the open source project K-9 mail hosted at Google code. It currently supports POP, IMAP and self signed certificates. This does not support third party certificates yet.

There is Aadvark labs which is in limited beta currently. I have signed up for the beta release and they are yet to invite me. Next set of invites are supposed to go on January 19th.

There is an application called ContactsSync for syncing contacts from your exchange to the phone. I could not find it in Android market by searching for contact. But when I searched for exchange it showed up. I did not try this one since I need the full email and calendar support and not just the contacts.

Also I found another application called TouchDown which claims full Exchange support. I tried TouchDown. But it does not seem to work when you need to be within a corporate network to have outlook web access. The free edition of TouchDown enables you to sync and read one day’s email and Calendar and all the Contacts. The full version costs $29.99.

There is also CompanionLink which works on a PC and syncs outlook and Gmail. This costs $29.95. But I do not want to send my corporate mail to Gmail.

Moonrug software also has support for Exchange. I have not tried it. I think it uses outlook web access and is possibly similar to TouchDown. This is available for free until March 1, 2009.

There is also no WiFi support with security certificates in Android. If this is supported, it would enable some to connect to their network and then check e-mail through an internal website at least when they are near their corporate wifi network.

Gizmodo has done a 3G coverage and speed test in 8 major cities and has presented the results. Now you know why Sprint’s voice coverage sucks. They were busy improving 3G coverage.

I ordered the Google dev phone on Dec 11th. I have not yet received any update on shipping information. After searching in Google I found this thread where some other people were talking about the lack of shipping information. Based on the information on that thread, I went to Fedex and tried tracking order by reference using my order number. Fedex found my order and it looks like my order was shipped the next day on Dec 12th and it is scheduled for delivery on Dec 17th. Now two more days.
Update: About an hour after I wrote this, I got an email saying that my order has been shipped along with the tracking number.

After waiting for a long time to get a better price for AT&T Fuze I decided to give up and buy the Android dev phone from Google. Instead of paying $350 with two year contract I got this phone for $399 with an additional $25 for Android market. The phone is also unlocked and there is no contract. Only problem is I won’t be able to use 3G from AT&T. I think there is WiFi in most places I go around. So it should not be a big problem. I can also switch to T-Mobile once AT&T contract gets over in another six months. Right now I am eagerly awaiting for the phone’s arrival.

Finally AT&T released HTC Fuze Windows mobile phone yesterday. I want to see and feel the phone physically before deciding to buy it. The AT&T store near me did not have one. AT&T web site had it yesterday. But today it is gone. All the reviews seem to be praising it. But the low battery life quoted in some reviews is the only thing which worries me. I have not yet used a pda phone. I charge my current Sony-Ericsson W810 phone once every 3 or 4 days. I am also planning to wait until Thanksgiving to see whether there are better deals for this phone.

I am not able to decide still whether to get an AT&T Fuze or an iPhone or neither. For those who are in the same dilemma below is a comparison. I hope this is useful for someone besides me. The Fuze might possibly release on Nov 11th. AT&T is also in no hurry to offer an Android phone. How much more open do they want Android to be?

Disclaimer: The information below may not be accurate. Use it at your own risk.

I used the following websites to collect information.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html

http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=Raph_Specs

http://www.htc.com/www/product/touchpro/overview.html