Back to Nirvana

I've gone back to Nirvana! HQ that is. After waiting (and still am) for Zendone to move into their beta testing phase, Nirvana HQ beat them to the punch by releasing their update to the Android app.

I think the Nirvana HQ crew did the right thing by bringing the development of their apps in house. The outsourced apps were barely adequate in my humble opinion.

It misses some of the features of Zendone's system but as far as my set-up is concerned, they are bells and whistles as opposed to core functionality that I require.

What I have also noticed is that the Evernote integration was actually slowing down my workflow so I am running on Nirvana HQ at the moment.

When things settle down at work for me (probably February next year) I might check in on Zendone and compare the two offerings. Until then, don't look for me, I have found Nirvana.

Ten reasons to ditch Apple for Android

The Advertiser: 10 reasons to ditch Apple for Android. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwr66osyg

All Goals: World Football app of choice!

I love my football! I follow the national league (Melbourne City FC), the English Premier League (Tottenham Hotspur), our national team and several other teams from various leagues all over the world. The best app I have found to do all of that in a timely way is All Goals.

This sucker does push notifications for pre game stats, goals, cards, HT, FT the lot. It is actually faster on the update than the official league app for Australia. Seeing as the A-League kicked off this week, I thought it timely to let any football fans I have reading this blog know what's available.

Hope your team wins!

Nexus 9 Nightmare

What a nightmare. My Nexus 9's performance seemed to deteriorate week after week, even after updates to the point it was crashing twice a day with a terrible screeching white noise effect to boot. After three factory resets, I called Google. To their credit, they answered within ten minutes and after another ten minutes over the phone, agreed to replace the unit.

I had to take my Nexus 10 back from my four year old daughter and am surprised how stable that is in comparison. Once I get the deposit together, I'll ship her off and see what the replacement unit looks like once it's dispatched.

Android 5.1

My Nexus 5 finally received the Android 5.1 update. It seems to be running a little more smoothly these days. Although it seems to chew through the battery life a little quicker. Not sure if it is due to the fact that I leave Bluetooth on all the time these days to sync with the Fitbit my partner bought me for my birthday in February.

One thing I love about 5.1 is the very simple ability to now choose your wifi network from the slide down menu using the new drop down facility instead of having to multiple click your way through settings. A very simple but effective change.

Google Drive Folder Shenanigains

Our organisation uses Dropbox and I have to say, I hate it. Trying to work collaboratively with about 40 staff is painful. I cannot recall the number of times someone moves a folder shared with them, only to make it unaccessible to the rest of the cohort sharing the folder or worse, deleting it for them.

I have been using Dropbox for so long I assumed that this was the case for Google Drive too. Not so! I just moved a folder shared with me by another organisation using Google for Work (old Google Apps) and no problems whatsoever! Loving life!

Google Read, really impressed.

I get loads of PDF's. I have to download, read and annotate many of them too. It was really by accident that I realised that I can upload my own PDF's into Google Read and access them across all my devices.

I was searching the web recently for back issues of a magazine I like to read when I have some spare time. I was prepared to whip out the credit card and pay for them. Low and behold, they give issues that are older than two years away for free. So I downloaded a bunch. Where to store them? Turns our Google Read is a great facility.

I am aware that Amazon offers the same service, however having two Android devices, it just seemed like the most intuitive way to manage the magazines.

I'd be interested to hear if others use Google Read on a regular basis. What is your experience of it?

PS - If you are about to either (a) ask where I got the D&D 5E versions of the books from or (b) slam me for having illegal copies which they actually are, I only downloaded them (and uploaded them to Google Read) after having purchased the original books.