Christmas and New Years 2012/2013

I seem to say it every time I post a new post here that I haven't done it in a while and I will try to write more, so here I am saying it again with a new post full of a lot of information.

So where do I begin, December was a busy month with the typical work/personal Christmas parties throughout the month, I was also able to score myself a new phone the much hyped and difficult to get, Google Nexus 4. I was able to get a order placed on Google through much F5ing to get the page to work properly. I think Google will need to get their act together the next time they decide to do a product launch. After waiting two weeks after the order was placed I received my shiny new +Google phone and I must say it rocks and it is quite speedy. I hope* to do a full review of this in the near future but in the mean time do a quick Google Search to find more information on it. 

Christmas & Traveling

Santa has arrived

This Christmas we decided to do a bit of traveling and a short trip to my sisters in Bowmanville. We left on Christmas Eve after leaving work at 11 and made the short trip of three hours. We spent two nights and one day there since we had to be back for work on the 27th. Christmas day was fun to spend time not only with my own family but with my sister, her boyfriend Ken and her kids (my niece and nephew), Hope and Ryan. Christmas is so much more fun where there are kids involved and now that Paige is stating to get to the age where she was having fun opening gifts and playing with all her new toys and did she ever get a lot of toys. As for Jodi and I we mainly got clothes but we also purchased a new Kitchen Aid Mixer, which is awesome.

Paige excited opening her gifts

Boxing day we arose early to hit the road back to Ottawa early. A storm was coming and we didn't want to get stuck or to be driving through it on the 401. We got on the road at about 10 am hoping to make a stop in Trenton and Sterling to visit friends and family. After making the first stop in Trenton and getting back on the 401 we decided to truck on through since the traffic was getting heavy. We made it back to Ottawa safe and sound at 3 pm.

New Years and Resolutions

Now its that time of year again, you know, day 365 the end of our calendar year, time to reflect on what we have all done in 2012 and what we would like to achieve and accomplish in 2013. Every so often at work we will watch a few different Ted Talks and a multitude to topics which are often very interesting and informative. The one below I watched in December and got me thinking about something that I do all too often, but that will change this year, take a look at the video, its only 3-4 minuets long and it may change your outlook on resolutions.


Oh and its also time to party and celebrate with friends and family to enjoy all we have and love around us. It is different this year for us, we have yet to make plans due to the lack of a babysitter and wanting to spend time with the family, so this year may be a quiet one where we will sit home order in some Chinese or Indian, and watch a few movies together.

Since I have been slow in actually finishing up this post, New Years has now passed and we managed to get out for a few hours and to see some friends, Paige was all dressed up for the occasion and here she is below ready to party.

New Years day was spent relaxing and taking down the Christmas decoration and preparing a Turkey with all the fixings and having a few friends over for a nice supper. After taking down the tree and seeing a neat idea on the internet, I have decided to start a new tradition for us. To cut a small 1 cm piece from the bottom of our tree each year and make an ornament for the tree the following year with the date burned into it. I'll post pictures in another blog when this is done.

QSSDJMRME

Android app Review #2: Google Currents

Google Currents is a news reader with a twist. News organizations or anyone for that matter can create their own customized Currents portal that users can add to the Currents app, but users can also add their own RSS feeds. I have been using the Currents app for about 4 months now. It was first only available to the US but in recent weeks has opened up to a whole new list of countries including Canada. It is available on Android and Apple devices.

I am a news junkie and have been looking for a good useful news app for some time now. I have tried Pulse, News Republic and a few others but they all have been off the mark.

• Pulse seems to be pre-installed on a lot of devices but its layout is a bit lacking when trying to view the news you want.
• News Republic allows you to select topics and it will provide you with news results, not allowing you to add your own sources. 

 

Google Currents has mainly US news sources right now for you to pre-select, I think this is mainly that it has not been available in other countries for too long. But don’t fret, it is as easy as adding a RSS feed and the Currents app will create a nice looking edition for you. News, Sports and everyday users can just visit the Google Publisher and create their own custom Google Currents edition to publish on Google and their website. It took me 15 minutes to create a Google Currents edition for myself. You can use the Currents publisher and add different elements to it and it will all get updated when anything changes on your sites. I have added my blog, Google+ Feed, Twitter Feed, Picasa Photos and a few other things. Anytime the Adam Sooley Current edition is opened it syncs for the newest information. Since Google Currents is linked to your Google account, all devices you have will be synced with the same sources.

Add my Google Currents Edition or browse some editions online.

Overall the Google Currents app does everything I need it to do for a news app and in a clean, intuitive way. Download it now from Google Play for Android or iPad and iPhone.

Visit the Google Currents homepage.

Android App Review #1 - Instagram vs. Camera Zoom FX

Many months ago I purchased the Android app Camera Zoom FX when it went on sale. One of the selling points for me of camera zoom was the ability to download plugins for the app to do different effects with your images. Once you place the effects on your images you can save them and share the image on mutiple social media sites with ease. I had heard about Instagram but to my dismay it was only available on iOS so Android users were SOL for trying Instagram. That was up until two weeks ago when Instagram released a Android version of their popular app. So we Android users finally have had a chance to see what all the hype was about.

Ease of Use

Instagram has this hands down. Once you take a picture, you are shown a preview and you can select the different filters or none that you like and hit go to have it uploaded to the web. While with Camera Zoom FX you will have to take extra steps to apply the filters.

Cost

 Instagram also has this one won hands down since it is free, while Camera Zoom FX will cost you $2.79.

Conclusion

Over all I like the ease of use of Instagram, but Camera Zoom FX has many more features and abilities overall. If you are looking for a camera app to share all of your photos use Instagram but if sharing is not your main deciding point go Camera Zoom FX. While writing this post, news just broke that Facebook has bought Instagram for 1 billion dollars. So I don't know if this information will change anyone's view. For me I am not a big fan of Facebook so I may stop using Instagram in the future if Facebook messes with the quality of the product but for now I will continue to use both.

Downloads

Camera Zoom FX
Instagram

All things Google

Some of you may be aware that I am a fan of Google. As I sit here and look at my screen I notice I have five tabs open in my browser. Four of those five tabs are Google products that I use most days. I thought I would give a quick run down on these and how Google is slowly getting its hands into everything.

Tab #1: iGoogle
iGoogle is a Google product much like your start or jumping off page for your browser. I can sign in with my Google account and add items to the page that I want to see on a daily basis. Some of these gadgets or items that I have included on my page are: Gmail, Calendar, RSS reader, and Finance. Go visit iGoogle and add and create the best start page for yourself from their thousands of items that you can add. I must add that all of those gadgets I have on my page are Google gadgets to pull from Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader and Google Finance.

Tab # 2: Gmail
If you have never used Gmail for your email, your being left behind. Google was the first to offer 1GB of free email storage and now their up to somewhere around 7 or 8GB free. Gmail is easy to use and has allot of customization options to make it look and feel the way you want it to.

Tab #3: Google Music Beta
This one is a fairly new Google product, since it was only announced in May and it still in a U.S. Beta invite only stage. But there is a way around all of that, I will explain later. Google Music is a online music storage service that allows you to upload your entire* music library and have access to it anywhere. When say entire music library I mean there is a 20,000 song limit. I have so far uploaded about 5000 songs with the easy to use music manager and I can now access all of my music from the web or my Android powered phone. Right now the service is only open to the U.S. but if you know how to use the software called Hot Spot Shield you can connect to a U.S. based proxy and I can send you one of my 4 invites. Once you sign up with the invite through a U.S. proxy, you can than access it anywhere without using a proxy.

Tab #4: Google+
Google+ is Google's newest addition to its product line. Google+ is a social network much like Facebook but with many superior features. Circles: Circles allow you to only share certain information with certain people. Some of my circles include: Family, Friends and Work. I can add people to these circles and only share certain posts and images with who I want to be able to see it. Hangouts: Hangouts is much like Skype but better. Hangouts allow you to have a video conference but not only one on one but you can have up to 10 people in one video conference. With Skype someone must pay for the service to get more that one on one chat. This works great with families that want to meet online for special events like Christmas, birthdays and such. Google is promising many great features with Google+ and they are making improvements daily and integrating Google+ with all of their other products. Google+ is still also in Beta invite only but you can sign-up here with one of my 150 invites.

And all of those tabs are open in Google's browser Chrome. One of the fastest browsers available on the market. It is also good for security and segregates threats within each tab, so if anything happens only that tab will crash.

There you have it  four out of five tabs in my browser are all Google products plus the Google browser Chrome. And if you must know the fifth tab was Blogger where I am writing this blog, so since Blogger is also owned by Google, that makes it five out of five tabs.

I will touch on some other Google products I use at a later date.... Stay tuned.

New Site and summer news

Its been quite awhile since I have done a update, so I thought it might be about time for one, but this time I am going to use Blogger. Up until now I have always designed, developed, and hosted all of my sites over the years since about 1995, now since I use Google for most everything, I figured now its time to try blogger.

The summer has been going quick, and it does not seem like we have done much but wait for the little one to arrive. If you are unaware, Jodi and I are expecting our first baby in the next month or so. Its been a bit busy prepping for the arrival of a new heart beat at the Sooley house. Our little bundle of joy will be a girl and she is due on September 8 but I think Jodi at this point is hoping for her to come a bit earlier.

Mr. Nice Cream is now in its second season of providing ice cold treats delivered in Riverside South on those old time Ice Cream Bikes. This year we have three students working and providing service on three different routes in the neighborhood. Only one of the students from this year is a return worker and he also provided us with a great reference for his friend who is also working for us. Make sure you check out MrNiceCream.ca and keep an eye out for us in the neighborhood. We recently had the bikes at the Riverside South Canada Day festivities and donated a portion of our sales to the Riverside South Community Association.

Now on to Google. Over the past few months I have had the chance not only to visit the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA for some training for work, but I have also been using the Google Music service and got an account on Google+.

First the Googleplex; I was at the Googleplex for a total of a week and it was an eye opening experience. Google really knows how to treat its employees if it not their multitude of restaurants and cafeterias providing FREE food all day long, or their FREE laundry service, or their FREE cars and bus service to San Fran to the ability to bring your dog to work with you. It was an awesome experience that everyone should experience, but unforgivably most will not.

Now on to Google+. Google+ is a product that has launch with much fan fare. It is a social network much like Facebook right now you can sign up to get access. Google+ will over time become a a threat to Facebook. It has enhanced on some Facebook's features and has some nice new ones that Facebook does not have. One of these is the use of "Circles", Circles allow you to place your friends in a group so you can share information with only certain or all circles, like "Work", "Friends" and "Family" this way you co-workers do not need to know about family related things. Another great feature is Hangouts; Hangouts allow you to do a video chat with up to 10 people at the same time. Now you might be saying, hold on here, Skype can do this. It certainly can but in order to do it with Skype, someone must have a paid account. These are just two of the new features of Google+, with more available and many more to come. Make sure you visit http://plus.google.com to sign up for an account and visit and add me at: http://gplus.to/acsooley

Late last year I was going on in a few blog posts about have good my Thrive Chequing account was working for me from INGDieect. Well now the Thrive Chequing accounts are available to all Canadians. It offers FREE checques, with NO FEES and a high interest rate. They also give you $25 for signing up for an account if you use my Orange Key 14477247S1 and you visit http://www.ingdirect.ca/referafriend. Plus if you have you direct deposit payroll moved to ING, they will give you an additional $100. What other bank does that? NONE.


Let me know what you think of the use of blogger instead of my regular site for my blog, at some point I think I will move the AdamSooley.ca domain name to point to here but I still have a lot of information I want to port and move over to here.