Official Google music desktop app

This Article does not make any sense now as google discontinued the Google music app and there is an official youtube music web app

Google don't provide a official Google play music app and that the way it is suppose to be. 

Some guy wrote a Google Music desktop app, but that is not a full desktop app based on google official music API (there is no official music api) it is a Website parser based on electron.

All the other solutions you find around the web are Google music web page parser based upon Electron or Windows Universal app, Adding their own functionality on top of it. Which means google can always red flag them and the users using the similar Apps? 

These app also raise the concern of privacy and security because you will be entering your google password on a third party google music website parser, which can be potentially dangerous.

So what is the solution? 

Enter chrome desktop Apps, Chrome provide you ability to run a website like a desktop app, which means it can launch a Web url in a border less window native app live environment and if a web page it written well it can behave like a Desktop app and doing so is a dead simple task.

Steps 

1. Install Chrome (if it is not already installed), Installing chrome will create short cut on desktop. (if not create your self)
2. Copy paste the shortcut again on desktop and rename the new shortcut to "Play Music" or what ever you like, (it is still a chrome short cut copy) 
3. Right click and go to the property of shortcut and append the Target field with
   --app=https://play.google.com/music/listen?authuser#/home 
   
   it will become like "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --app=https://play.google.com/music/listen?authuser#/home  (see image below)
   
   
   
   
   
4. Change the icon (to make short cut look cool)
1. Download (right click and save image) this icon and place it somewhere in your computer (its up to you)
   
   
2. Chick on the change Icon, browse to the path you have saved the icon and choose it. 
5. Click "OK" on main shortcut dialog.

Tada!!

Now double click on the shortcut you have just created, it will open a Google Music page with experience of a native desktop app. 

This will be the as far as you can you when it comes to the totally legit google music desktop app. Will be directly supported by google, Will update with new web feature when your chrome browser upgrade. 

above method can also work for 

Amazon Prime Music (though they have a native app, but it is still electron base), Saavn, Gaana (or any other website)

Disclaimer:

This will not provide native song caching on your desktop, but neither do any other website parser (even amazon official desktop player does not cache or store songs on desktop application). If you want that functionality use Apple Music (itunes), but Apple Music Android application sucks big time.  

Using no ip with custom domain

If you use noip.com (or any other dynamic dns service) and want to step up you game by hosting your custom domain using it. noip will suggest that you take it Noip plus managed DNS service, which is pretty expensive for home user point of view, it might be of some use if you are a corporate, but then if  your are, dynamic DNS would be last thing you want to use to host your product/site. You would be better of using a static ip, or use cloud services. Hence the the charges noip is asking for managed DNS seems just too high. 

But if you take it, it simply (over simplification) means, when you will type: 

www.mydomain.com (example) --> Goes to domain provider --> which direct to no-ip dns (you have to put that your domain registrar page) --> which map it to your dynamic ip.

and for that you have to pay $35/year to noip. I am not saying that you should not pay at all to them, after all they are providing a fantastic service. I personally use noip enhanced, which allow me to have 50 hosts (and better domain names, than free one), but for home/small scale user that the extant up to which noip make sense, before you graduate to static ip or cloud, but none the less, below trick will work with free account also. 

"So the simple way to host custom domain with dynamic dns is just to update the cname record, in your domain registrar page."

Every domain registrar  has this feature, here is link to instruction for godaddy. Or you can ask your domain registrar for modifying/adding this record. 

Now what will happen that:

when you add cname record --> www.mynoip.ddns.net (noip free domain) against www.mydomain.com (your registered domain)

www.mydomain.com will redirect to  www.mynoip.ddns.net

The best part of this technique is that your type in url will mask the redirected url, so if user types www.mydomain.com --> they will get redirected internally  to www.mynoip.ddns.net, but they won't feel the difference, the browser will keep the typed in name www.mydomain.com in the url. Neat! 

and all that for free.

Google Music Vs Apple Music on Android

Though the subscription base free music space was created a while ago and we ( in India ) had the players like Saavn and Gaana providing free songs with either Advertisement or at a monthly subscription bases but they were never able to really shine because of the limited and low speed data connectivity, but all that changed with the launch of Reliance Jio last year. Now there is a abundance of data on mobile, it might not be enough to download and watch full HD movies every day, but it is enough to download and listen to music. Average human almost listen to same songs everyday, which phase out slowly with one or two songs taking their place per day or less.

With this internet revolution two more big player join the pool of the subscription base song service and they have unlimited resources, machine learning ability and cash to burn and potential to become number one in this space.

Google and Apple.

Apple obviously started the digital music revolution in west, but lagged in subscription based music model, google is also new to this space. Both of them offer similar services, but apple has a unique ability that is its integration with its desktop music player itunes.

They are similar in may ways like,

1. Subscription base music service, pay once a month or year and get access to unlimited music in their repositories.
2. Both offer ability to upload personal music, in case it is not there in their repository to cloud. Apple via itunes and Google via google music manager. 
3. Both have similar apps for Andorid and iphone. 
4. Both offer similar type of radio channels, top songs and public playlist.
5. Both cache listing music (on phone or sd card, you choose in options) automatically so, if you do repeated playback of a song it won't cost you data. 

That is pretty much similarity as far as services goes, where these application really differ is on the basis of experience.  Where as google develop lots of app for iOS and pretty good at it, Apple have only 2 apps on Android, Move to iOS and Apple Music and apple clearly don't know how to develop for android.

"Apple music have potential but that is eclipsed by pathetic interface/implementation on android platform."

Apple Music

Apple music have potential but that is eclipsed by pathetic interface/implementation on android platform. with less than two hundred thousand downloads and only 3.5 stars on play store, it is plagued with issues, like 

• Music downloads are unpredictable. Will it happen, When will it happen, such a suspense. 
• Does not handle slow connection well, a playlist get downloaded asynchronously and if a playing song hangs it just get skipped in between to play next half downloaded song.
• Unable to create apple id from app, it just crashes. So adding your family to apple music is pain.
• There are many bugs and general usability issues, its like Apple is bad at design.  
• It is online only, if you have a local music on your phone folder apple music will just ignore it.

If you compare plan prices apple is way cheaper for family, but on boarding is just pain, though apple music app give option to create an apple id, it crashed when you try to create one. 

I don't think apple is serious about it android app, and it seems like it is being developed by unpaid interns at Apple. After Airtel Wynk music, this is the by far the worst music app I have ever used.

The only advantage and plus point of the Apple music app is, itunes integration, the music, playlists you add to library or download in Apple Music app will show up in desktop itunes and will be available off line and itunes is simply the best music player available for desktop (if you are interested in paid or subscribed content) and itunes provide better sound quality on desktop than a web player, so if you are serious about the music quality in a very pro way, 

"Google Music lags a desktop music player, only way to play a google music songs on desktop is via browser, and if your internet is not working listen to cached/downloaded music on phone or turn on the radio."

Google Music

On the other hand google music experience is seamless on the Android, with major  advantages like, 

• Amazing integration with google assistant, just say "Play, song name", and it will play the songs.
• Though the play store rating for google music is also not that great with just 3.9 stars and it is a bolt ware, but this application is capable of playing local music at sd card or phone memory but really shines if you use it online player
• It automatically cache your songs, able to detect your recent playlists and show them on top. Have a good song suggestion and top hit lists.
• Integration with youtube, many songs which are only released on youtube also showup in search hence making it repository the ultimate one.

However,

Google Music lags a desktop music player, only way to play a google music songs on desktop is via browser, and if your internet is not working listen to cached/downloaded music on phone or turn on the radio. 

Though there are open source attempt to make a desktop player for google music, but it is just electron browser wrapper with few additional hacks, google won't allow you to download subscription music on PC.

Though you can download the purchased music via Google music manager, but music manager is in it self is a very simple and a bare minimum buggy app!, which if don't work will give you cryptic errors with no resolution. There is a very minimum online support for it also.

Conclusion

So if your android phone is your primary mode of listening to music google music is way to go.

But if you have fallen in love with desktop itunes (because no other desktop music player come close) and a Android user, you are gonna suffer in agony, because android Apple Music app just sucks at the moment (hopefully apple improve it in future)

It is my personal opinion but it seems like itunes provide better sound quality than google music does. To achieve a true potential of cloud, you have to be connected always, which google does the best, but that where it lags also, as it does not offer a offline music player like itunes, because sometimes working in a cafe on a slow 4g connection  you just want to plug in to your Bose Noise Canceling headphones in your laptop and listen away, that is just not happening with Google Music "Web" always streaming music.

   

Debugging a nodejs app step by step

It been a while since javascript made it mark as a serious server side programming language for server side development, thanks to nodejs.

But what is the use of a good language if it does not have the full support to debug the app in a efficient and painless way.

For a long time node-inspector was the one standard way to debug the nodejs app.

But since the inception of  javascript the language was treated more a tactical language and never enjoyed the full support of IDE's. I think it was the firefox firebug which made it's dent with ability to debug firefox in the browser, then IE devtools also made a good impact, but in recent days no one come close to debug Javascript in browser as wide and simple than chrome dev tool, it both powerful and popular. Hence it been a default choice for debuger for chrome also, using the --debug, debug-brk and node-inspector, 

Dear Nokia people don't buy phones to break wallnuts

Nokia has gone nuts this time with the revelation of Nokia 6, the mid range smartphone with low range processor. It is like HP would be selling spectre laptop with i3 processor (not exact matching analogy, but you get the point)

Nokia 6 is a comeback phone for the company and they should have been little more aggressive with the specs of the phone, but they took the inspiration from Nokia 3310 and 3311, the phones made to survive apocalypse.

But news flash the 3310 and 3311 must have survived the test of time and may be usable over the 1G networks, but no one uses them anymore.

See the video below. where a woman is shown giving the Nokia phone a torture test.

I don't know if the above video is original or fake, or its a company clever Technics to showcase the phone sturdiness without giving its official name and the the rumor fly into the market.


Today a average teenager will buy a phone and need a change within couple of years. The technology is changing so fast that, even the top of the line processors began to look old in couple years, where the Snapdragon 430 will stand in two years, I don't know.

The Xiaomi is selling the metal body Redmi 3s for Rs 7999. Even its Best mid range offer the Redmi note 4 is cheaper than Nokia 6! In which fools confidence Nokia is in I don't know.

Though Nokia 6 is only launched in China and company can update it's specs before letting it go into the other markets, but something is sure Nokia has build some great expectation in the market and they have a edge and if they don't update their game now, there will be no comeback for the once iconic phone maker.

End of Pebble, End of user trusts in crowd funded projects

Pebble a kick started most successful crowd source project chickened out on 6 Dec 2016.

Buy outs keep happening in industries, that not a new thing, but buying out just to kill competition does not feel justified. It makes you wonder what will happen if someday Facebook kills Whatsapp in favor of it's messenger! If such take over happen more often the startup products will loose the charm they are enjoying now.

I am a gadget geek and was pebble as original smartwatch was always on my top buying list, unfortunately they didn't shipped to India for most part of the company life, I was among the first one to order a pebble when they actually shipped it to India. Though it was not as glossy and fitnessy as fitbit, but it always have certain elegance to it.

My pebble is out in wild on it's own.

The thing I don't understand how pebble was in trouble, it was the most successful kickstarter project and every pebble crowd funding project achieve its target in record time.

It only means one thing that as the market competition goes up, pebble owners sit together and thought over it and said "Fuck it!". We got our profits and time to kill it.

And now Fitbit owns pebble, discontinuing its products, basically bury a worthy competitor to sell its own fitness band as watches. Face it Fitbit is not a watch its a fitness band with a $50-100 Propitiatory bands, people go to run with it. It has a effective battery life of 3 days and you have to keep flicking your wrist to watch time.

Pebble was a watch, it was with minimalist features which works, battery life of amazing 7-10 days. When other smart watches were quoting GB's of memory/RAM, GHz of processing power, pebble was using KB's of RAM and KH'z of processor clock speed. They were back to basic and it feels that there is something fundamentally right and reinvented in these watch's. It has good amount of application on it to, but somewhere down the line other some software creators like Evernote and Google ditched it in favors of their own platforms or internal politics. If it would have some serious note taking capability using google Keep or something, it would have been a killer watch (my personal choice).

For now, my pebble out in wild now, no software updates, no bug fixes. probably no new application. I am not sure even if it is legal to drop sudden support for a product which is still under warranty, may be the community crusaders will soon find out.
  
When you create something awesome, you should cling on to it, even though pebble creators feels that they should sell their company to Fitbit, they should have insisted hard to keep the pebble line alive. I feel sorry for a promising product (not owners, because they might be having fun with loads of cash).

Whatsapp! video calling a instant hit.

"One app to rule them all"

That's what now whatsapp! punch line should be.

The internet messenger app has come a long way, and many might consider its success as fluke, but it was not, It came around a time Jaxtr and other messenger platform were flexing its muscles and using the unreliable SMS to deliver the messages to those who were not on their platform, because development for Symbian n60, Android, iOS, blackberry were Ok, but going back to Symbian n40 and other lower platform (like features phones) was "so old fashion".

In that time also when, SMS was charges ₹1,₹2 and ₹5 for local national and international messages respectively, whatsapp! came, and it came for almost every platform, even few feature phone also had it.

Where internet was a luxury for some and non essential thing for many, FREE local, national and international messaging made it a essential feature on every smart phone. I can't say about all of the world, but in India, whatsapp! ushered in the age of the mobile internet (or internet).

The data recharges are no longer a luxury, they are the cost effective way to message 1000s of people 1000 times a day.

Sure there were parallel messaging platform, but they were very future product specific, provided tons of features, which won't work on a feature phone or 2g internet connection, putting them in a category of useless.

Every time any other app release the feature which consider to be hip and USP for that service like voice messages, delivery notification, whatsapp! was fast to catch them up that also with minimum hiccups.

Google duo and allo seems to compete whatsapp but global acceptability is a bitch!

While Google duo is still struggling to fix its video connectivity issue, whatapp! is already out with Video calling, and it is certainly a well tested feature put in by the group. Even though google practically own the Android platform, none of its communication service was able to complete with the simplicity and efficiency of the a simple app like whatsapp!.

I have to say its amazing a simple idea of of a mobile messenger add (and not so original) gone so far. Sometimes you don't have to re-invent the wheel, but just to improve it and make it available for everyone.  

Whatsapp! will change the internet world like Gmail did 12 years ago.

Computer dark age is coming!

On the technical news channels, I keep hearing news like PC shipment is declining ever year because people don't want new PC/Laptop when all they want to do can be done on a phone. Smart phones portable device whose more than 90% of the market is dominated by Apple and Android operating systems, which are not up-gradable (dependent on manufacturer) and software support also dies in few years. 

But the most difficult part on these devices are that you can't code on them. So when a parent choose that all they want in home is a Tablet or a phone, they deny the opportunity to a young mind (who don't know what he/she wants) to play around with a PC, to code. The main contributor to the open source community, the small tools and useful apps you get, are these people who got their interest in programming way back in 2005 when their parents bought a new PC.

Not only the declining PC sales affect the people who don't feel the need of PC, but it will affect those also who do, because the declining number for a manufacturers means that they will be discouraged to create new components for these machines, and will increase their R&D budget for mobile computing chips. 

Imagine Intel stop R&D on computer processor or only start targeting the Enterprise users. We will return back to IBM Business machines era, where enterprises use to make machines for the enterprise and only people with specialized computer degree were allowed to work on them and use them, they will make superior dumb down end user product and will price it whatever they want to, because there will be no opensource community to challenge them.

For me smart phone tablets are always nice to have, but they were also use to be a part of a Eco system where my PC sits in the center of it. Without PC where do you take your photo backups? On google drive paid storage? $24 a year for 100 GB? or $240 for 1 TB? You can buy 10 hard drive in that cost and creates effective backup strategy, to keep replica and keep all your data safe in your home and without any company seeking into it. 

PC is the important part of the digital technology and it is not going anywhere right now, but remember companies runs by sales figures, If people remain ignorant about them for long, computer dark ages will come. 

Problem with iPhone 7 design

No matter how much android users shout that iphone has stolen feature from their beloved phones and OS . There is a one simple fact that iPhone still remains the de facto benchmarking standard when it comes to compare any phone performance and that's what the problem begins.

From almost a decade since the first iPhone saw the light many other manufactures copied it style or features which turned out to be a very successful model and when from iPhone 4 when apple really making its grip on the market all other phones started getting performance and styling bench mark comparison with iPhone. In simple word stared to copy iPhone. Which is some what a good thing , but with release of iPhone 7 I really fear that thay blind copy cat approach will backfire at consumer.

2 things I liked about any iPhone (I hate them in general) it's Camera and itunes music , the painless song transfer the quality of sound.

They destroyed the camera by bumping it out! Now your iPhone can wobble at table. Hurry !!! What a innovative design.

Where will I plug my $500 wire bose head phone and no I don't want to carry it umbilical cord like headphone adapter!

But why I am worried I am pretty sure that I am not gonna buy iphone ever.

Because many other manufactures which ship my beloved Android are influenced by market rather than originality and if this thing catch on we will be back to era of micromax type bumped out camera and the 10$ perfectly fine earphones will cost 50$ just because they have Bluetooth and a unreliable battery.  It is bad enough that I have to remind my self to charge my phone every day. Now I have to  add earphones to that list.

Let Apple do whatever it want to, they might ship $500 bricks and people /fans still by it on the name of innovative design. But I would still like the smooth phone body and a earphone jack on my phone.

Nikon Speedlight SB-300 review

I was a proud owner of Nikon SB-400 speed light and considered it it a greatest tiny (value formoney ) TTL flash ever existed. Sure it lacks power and lateral tilting capabilities, but it is decent enough. You don't look like a wedding photographer while using it, it's has a low profile and it only takes 2 AA batteries so it as light as a flash can get.

But I was wrong as Nikon released SB-300 it latest addition to beginner flash segment, with even lighter profile and it only takes 2 AAA batteries, when it comes to the weight considering flashes, it is as light as any flash can go but...and it is a big but, it power does not cut it. I can deal with lower recycle times, and quick battery drain if flash is of some use, but sadly the SB-300 is more or less a toy. 

As sad it is Nikon has discontinues it SB-400 speed light and SB-300 new kid on the block, so while looking for a flash for my newbie brother I considered SB-300, and despite of its mostly negative reviews, I was little skeptic that how bad it could be? 

Here is the test fire results of SB-400 (former) and SB-300 (later) with almost same setting, and zero flash compensation, pointing upwards bouncing off the 9 feet ceiling (which is a considerable a very small room). below is the SB-400 result. 

SB-400, F1/6, ISO 100, 110mm

Thought SB-400 did not created the second Sun here but you can see the subject was properly light up, and have some what accurate room lighting condition. 

On the second hand when I tried the SB-300, shot below. 

SB-300, F1/6, ISO 100, 120mm

The shot was complete disappointment, the image was dark, and not that very good, considering the ceiling was very low.

Sure I could have boosted the flash compensation and have gotten the same result as sb-400, but considering the ceiling was low (only 9 feet) and room was small, I was expecting bit more in that condition, because int the real world the rooms are ceiling both are gonna be bigger, and you flash compensation will max out.  

So should you buy SB-300? 

No, If you are even a little bit serious about photography (armature photography), you should pass this flash, you will get plenty of professional third party flashes in this category, at cheaper prices (but bulky). It is sad that SB-400 is discontinued, but if you are very picky about the low profile and low weight of the flash, I think the SB-500 speed light is the proper and forward replacement for SB-400. But SB-500 is very poorly priced and you will get a semiprofessional third party flash in that price range. 

And Yes, Though SB-300 can't be your primary on camera flash, it be companion for those small mirrorless camera, who prefer pocket profile over picture quality, but some bouncing flash is always better than your on camera emergency flash light. 

Can you play games using Intel® HD Graphics 530 ?

In recent years Intel has come up with the graphics core inbuilt in its processors and Intel HD 530 is a recent example for that, which is coming with latest Intel 6^th generation skylake processors. Form a very amateur (& Intel) point of view this graphics core is capable of handling 4k display load and can support graphics memory up to 1.7 GB, pretty great huh!

Well I can say with no doubt that it a very power efficient processor, which revolutionist the notebooks and ultra-books these days in case of battery life and you might be able to see the 4k movies on it. I suggest that you should not push it behind 1080.

Bench marking 

Though you can expect a bearable frame rates at 1280x720 basic setting, but HD530 graphics card won't hold the fort even if you bump it to 1600x900.

I have used the Unigine Valley Benchmark 1.0 to benchmark this Intel Core graphics and here are the results 

Resolution	Preset	Max FPS	Min FPS	Average FPS
1280x720	Basic	36	12.7	21.4
1600x900	Extreme	5.4	2.1	3.1

It was pretty clear that only a very low graphics intense game can be played on this graphics card that also on the basic setting.

To put things in context a mid range dedicated graphics card like NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 4gb graphics card churned out these number on extreme HD setting.

Resolution	Preset	Max FPS	Min FPS	Average FPS
1920x1080	Extreme HD	63.5	21	34.7

Clearly even a highly graphics intensive game is playable at all the time.

I have seen HD 530 fail to render simple desktop animations properly (or smoothly) like the windows wait wheel (or some people call it wheel of death) at 1080 settings.

Your graphics card effect the usage of application like Photoshop and many movie editors, it does not matter whether you have i3, i5 or i7 processor (All the above bench marking is done on i7 6700 processor).

So Intel graphics cores are only usable where power consumption is a big issue, a dedicated graphics card take more that 50% power of your device, like laptops (ultra-books) or you want to save cost and know for sure that you are not going to use your desktop or laptop for any graphics intensive work other than playing 2D chess (I am pretty sure HD 530 will have issue rendering 3D chess).

Verdict 

So don’t go with the Intel claim that they have improved their graphics core a lot since the 4^th generation processors (HD 4600),  Fact is they still fails to deliver when it comes to gaming or graphics intensive work.