I have been a huge proponent of Google and their Android platform, I love it, its great, flexible and the selection of phones are insane, so many to choose from. I liked what they have done with their Play Store, now its really organized and only getting better. Even with the release of the Nexus 4 I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

My one major issue with them is the region segregation, its annoying as hell, Apple honestly makes no difference what so ever. If your account is registered in the US then you are treated as if you are within the US and get access to all the software, shows, and movies.

Google operates differently, even if you are a US account with a US Credit Card and Address you don’t get access to everything on the US store which drives me nuts. Except if you have a US sim in your phone, but if you have a tablet then it does it based on your location.

While I was in the states I bought Iron Man, Transformers, and Star Trek, just movies I love watching again and again just to see how the Nexus 7 works with and they are amazing movies. And I downloaded it onto my machine not just streaming, so I can take it back home with me to Kuwait and play it normally. Now in Kuwait with the movies on my device it won’t let me play them, are they serious, thats just ridiculous. People willing to pay for whats legal but if you stop them from getting it legally then they will get it illegally, what they are doing is ridiculous, they are seriously stopping a source of revenue, people want access.

Apple products are amazing I will say that about them, even though I hate the company, and even for my love for Google, they have screwed up and they need to learn from Apple that got something right. Fix this already.

That’s just insane, the phone just disappeared, both the 8 GB & 16 GB version, within 20 minutes.

I would expect Google to expect a large amount of order and manage their stock, but it sold out across the globe. And they screwed us who were waiting on the schedule since they said it wold open 9 am PST but turns out it opened up even earlier and was gone right away.

Now it is either we wait for Google to release more units or go onto Ebay which some sellers are selling the phone for $200 over the $350 original tag price.

Now Instagram has activated it’s live pages for Instagram accounts, for all this time I think they stuck to mobile phones for a while but since their acquisition by Facebook I thought it was a matter of time before they make a live page. I checked yesterday night and it wasn’t active, but here it is active now. So now you don’t need to have the Instagram App to see the pics, so if you are still stuck on a Blackberry you can see the pics from the Instagram website via their username so it would be “instagram.com/USERNAME” mine is at the link below.

Link: Instagram

A long weekend is coming up and you have to throw in a few movies while its here. These are the ones I have in hand at the moment, but then there are the ones that are in movies, but I wouldn’t watch a censored movie. Surprisingly the one I really want to see is Something From Nothing The Art Of Rap which is a very cool rap documentary, another documentary about the hacking that went on last year is We Are Legion, the rest of the movies are the usual entertaining ones for the long weekend.

• The Amazing Spiderman
• Madeas Witness Protection
• Fast Girls
• Safety Not Gauranteed
• The Expendables 2
• We Are Legion
• Magic Mike
• Madagascar 3 Europe’s Most Wanted
• The Tall Man
• Thats My Boy
• Rock Of Ages
• Prometheus
• People Like Us
• Men In Black 3
• Arbitrage
• Something From Nothing The Art Of Rap

I had a chance to get my hands on the Zain router, running on the LTE/4G frequencies in Kuwait which still hasn’t been fully certified from the Ministry of Communications. So people are asking the main reason for the delay is MoC, they have everything deployed for a little while now, but as usual politics is what stops things in Kuwait, but MoC is a totally different story.

Getting my hands on it I had a bit of skepticism but I did try AT&T’s 4G services and I have seen how fast it is and its scary fast. So the first thing I wanted to do is test it where ever I can, and this case I tested it at work and friend’s places and my home. Overall I am impressed with the hardware, it is solid and gets a lot of signal, decent speed even when it is low signal, and that was the important test for me, even with low signal it was getting decent speeds around 10 MB.

It’s a Huawei modem, looks good and simple, 4 Ethernet ports on the back and right now the services are not open to the public. The worst signal I got was ranging from 8MB to 16MB, up to 32MB to 42MB. Those are some very scary speeds, and surfing the net feels lighting fast, I do love fast internet. And for 33 KD a month honestly its not too bad, but the cap should at least be 200 or 250 GB not 80 GB

Pros:

• Gets decent speed even with bad signal
• It doesn’t have to be next to a window like Mada so you can place it inside your house and it will work
• It has reached 42 MBPs with me, which got about 4.1 MB down with downloads

Cons:

• The Cap is 80GB, thats nothing compared to the speed
• You can buy more space but its overpriced in my opinion
• Its not consistent at times, but I think they are just ironing out a few kinks in the system

Based on what speeds can be reached you can reach which is 2.1 MB/s to 4.1 MB/s you can use up your 80 GB cap in 11 to 6 hrs depending on your speed. And previously the 21 MBps had a 60 GB limit from Zain so logically it should be at least 120 GB based on their original capping scheme. Overall I think the cap is ridiculous but they are going to do it then a person should get a good bang for their buck with a 250 GB limit.

If you reach the cap you can buy an extra 25 GB for 12 KD or 5 GB for 3 KD, overall I think the pricing is off and not proportional but at least they give you an option to buy more data. For a 15 month contract you get the first three months 50% off and the device for free with 33 KD per month after the first three months. Overall the package is pretty good.

Testing In Shuweikh

Sometimes it would hang a bit, in an odd way and torrents would slow down even when the surfing speed is still high so its a bit surprising. The main issue is consistency, nothing beats a fiber connection but if you don’t have the option then this is the next best thing for surfers. Some gamers will like it but if you care about your ping then this is a bit on the high side. So its great for surfing and certain amount of downloading, not for heavy internet use, but its the perfect back up to your home internet if something goes wrong.

Testing in Miseela/Bidaa

In my case I have crappy land lines so I depend on WIMD and I’m honestly very happy with them even though they are a bit congested still at least a solid 12 to 15 MB and hitting 20 MB in the evenings with no cap. If you can have fiber thats always better but then again this device will really do the job because 4G coverage is supposed to be all over the country by the time it rolls out.

Testing In Fintas with One Signal Bar

Overall I think its an excellent product but they are working out the kinks, it did really reach those high speeds but we have to keep in mind nobody is on the network and it isn’t commercially available so until it is then we can judge the real speed based on the number of users, I hope they have the band width to accept the number of users who will get on board. I’m not sure when it will go commercial because the issue isn’t with Zain its with a governmental entity and you can never guess when they will be done.

Speedtest with VPN on, overall not bad, surfing speed feels quick

You just won’t believe this was done by amateurs, and I know it takes a lot of skill to control those cars like they did. It really does look as good as a blockbuster movie, and I loved that all the cop cars were corvettes. RC Helicopter just took it over the top, very cool.

Barcelona is one of the city’s that I really want to visit but haven’t had the chance yet. Pau Garcia Laita made this extremely cool tilt-shift video of Spain’s second largest city, it honestly looks like toys from this point of view. I need to learn how to make Tilt-shift videos.

This is a prototype unit and usually the Google Nexus gets released around the end of the year so the specifications might change. According to the site that got it’s hands on the prototype it’s rocking a 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU, 1280 x 768 4.7-inch screen, 2GB of RAM, and just 8GB of storage, all of which matches earlier rumors. It’s also running Android 4.12, but there have been rumors flying around that it will be released with Android 4.2, but we would never really know.

When it came to the choice of manufacturer I honestly I’m not too happy, I was hoping they would go back and try HTC since I love their designs or they could try the Motorolla Razr Android since they were very cool designs, Samsung was always a good choice, but LG? really?

I think the back looks cool, it reminds me of the nexus wallpaper. And yes the screen looks crappy, but I they have the brightness turned completely down. I am very interested in seeing how this turns out. I’ve never had an LG phone but I keep hearing their phones have questionable quality. Im not sure exactly how they pick the manufacturer but I have heard that they put in a bid with a mock up design and it google picks the one they like. Well I just hope Google knows what they were doing, and I know I’m going to buy it because its the next Google phone. In Google We Trust.

Link: Gizmodo

From the text messages and posts that the government has been announcing that basically we shouldn’t be out for the next few days. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday all the roads are basically going to be packed on the map, 600’000 people are going to be rerouted at the busiest times of the day.

• 10:00 am – 2:00 pm – The Roads in Blue will be blocked
• 4:30 pm – 9:00 pm – The Roads in Blue will be blocked

Based on the map we are pretty much screwed, and driving to work is going to be a nightmare. I was thinking of taking the seaside so at least I could get a view while stuck in traffic. I don’t know how they decided to plan this, but as usual there was no planning in the matter, but at least they announced that they are blocking it so we know what we are getting our selves into. So if you don’t need to go out don’t, but if you do be prepared for a lot of road rage.

I know I have been gone for a little while but it seems quite a few things were taking place while I was gone. One of them being the internet prices being slashed, which I think is pointless if 80% of the population can barely get 2MB thanks to the MOC. We need infrastructure before they can really go after prices, and the original price fixers are the MOC, but thats a whole different subject for a later stage.

My one major surprise was Google Maps, I pretty much lived on Google Maps on a daily basis figuring out how to get to where in the most efficient way or to find the scenic route. In Kuwait we use it often but not with all the features, but it seems that they brought one of the best features to the maps, which is the traffic layer, even though I honestly question the accuracy of it or even how they are doing it, I am impressed. Lets hope more of Google’s Features become available locally.