Suarez - Stays or Leaves?

The question on most of Liverpool fans mind is of whether Suarez will stay or decide to leave. At the moment I'm sure no one knows, even Suarez whether he'll be staying or leaving. On the other hand Liverpool might have already decided to sell him - which as a Liverpool fan I hope not.

I believe that if Suarez leaves Liverpool he'll also leave England. I don't think Liverpool and the fans could have done anything better in his regard. They have supported throughout all his problems, something that other fans would never do.

There are a small section of the fans which immediately called for the sale of Suarez and the reinvestment of the money in one or two top class players. This could be an option if Liverpool want to sell Suarez. However the big question is whether Liverpool will attract these big players. These days there are more than one club which can 'steal' our transfer targets from under our hands - Man Utd, Man City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham ....

If it was up to me, Suarez stays. After getting a 10 match ban he stills trains and enjoys playing football from what I could see in the training photos. This is a trait which ain't that common any more in footballers. Suarez is madly in love with football. He is and acts as a football fan not a football superstar.

His hunger for winning, his frustration in losing (resulting in bans) and his high work rate are the three reasons I would never let go of him.

Who is damaging England's reputation? Suarez or the FA+SKY?

Many shared their views on the Suarez - Ivanovic incident, one of which was David Cameron. Cameron justified his remarks on this particular case by saying the incident "sets the most appalling example to young people in our country." 

However is Suarez at fault for all of this? He is clearly sorry and apologised more than twice. One cannot also let off the media companies who played replays of the incident for tens of times during the match. If you don't want to give a bad example to children, shouldn't the amount of replays be limited to once or twice?

In Italy there is a limit on the number of instant replays for controversial referee decisions. This was done to safeguard the referees from extreme criticism they were suffering. Shouldn't a similar clause limit the amount of replays for such incidents?

All this hype and replays all led to widely publicise the "appalling example" and harsher ban given to Suarez - a view shared by a number of former players.

At least one positive comes from Mancini who says that "Luis Suarez is his player of the year, despite the Liverpool striker's ban for biting Branislav Ivanovic."

Suarez Sorry Statement

My Favourite YouTube Reviewers

Today I'm going to share with you my favourite three tech reviewers on YouTube. The honours go to +Marques Brownlee, +Sam Pullen and +Armando Ferreira.

+Marques Brownlee aka MKBHD is the best all rounder; great content, great visuals, brilliant presentation and speaking skills. The following clip is a brilliant interview by +Euro Maestro with MKBHD.

+Sam Pullen does a number of device reviews and Top Wallpapers, Games and Apps of the week. His Channel features a number of side by side mobile camera comparisons which are must see for those interested in phone photography.

+Armando Ferreira is certainly the best in detailed reviews of certain products. Detailed videos on Android Themes and products like 10 inch tablets such as MS Surface. However he's still most likely know for 'Why is Android Better than iOS'. Below is Part 1 of 5 of this very popular series with over 950k views.

A shout out also goes to +Dave Cryer. If it was a year ago he would certainly be in the Top 3, however I have not been a big fan of his latest content. Was a big fan of the Question and Answer series which seems to have been shelved. I'm still on the look out for any future changes in Geekanoids hopefully moving back towards its roots.

Google+ Integration with Blogger

Google is widening the Google Plus integration over the whole range of product. A few days ago it was the turn of Blogger. As can be seen in the screenshot below, the description accompanying the Share Post is now added in the comments. Any replies to that Google+ post is also shown in the comments.

This is a move to eliminate the fragmentation of comments that exists across blogs and social networks where they are shared. The G+ integrated comments is the best way to bring everything together.

This shows the potential G+ has and I can't wait to see such integrations with other products. I'm sure that a similar system will be used to YouTube in the near future. YouTube is already integrated with Google+ as can be seen in a YouTube video by +martin shervington (link). Such a move will only keep increasing the G+ and YouTube integration.

Lazors - Android Game

Lazors is currently my current favourite android game (Play Store Link). The aim of the game is to direct the lazer beam/s to the different light sensors present on the 150 different game levels. Different objects such as mirrors and prisms are used to reflect and refract the light beams.

While the initial levels are easy, it goes get harder and more challenging as one progresses. It is important to note that the levels do not increase in difficulty in each and every level. Easy and Medium difficulty levels can be found in the middle of the levels.

A brilliant video review by +Sam Pullen can be found in the video below:

Google Keep

To start of with I was very excited about the prospect of a Google note taking app. What I love most about it is its simplicity. Next in my like list is the fact that syncs immediately over all android devices and can be immediately viewed on drive.google.com/keep/

The Android App is beautiful! While Android App is beautiful the web version is very poor both visually and in functionality. The android app allows reordering of notes and colouring of notes which are all missing in the web based version. My preference would be to improve the UI on both Android and Web before introducing new features.

New features introduced will determine the route Google Keep wants to take. If Keep was intended to be a very simple note taking app, further features are limited. If Keep wants to go the Evernote way, they can use Google Docs and merge them with Keep to create a note taking suite. If this is the route Google decides to take, the trick is how to keep it a simple note taking app while introducing further features which might be slightly hidden away.

Route (1) would be to add a bit more features but keep them hidden at face value. It is kept as the current basic Sticky Notes app, with more editing and formatting options once you go a level deeper.

Route (2) there can be a mix between Sticky Notes and a full note taking app. They could be separate but in the same app. Sticky Notes could show all the notes/lists on the cards, while the full notes show a snippet with no colouring options.

Between the two options, (2) is the easiest to implement and my preferred solution. If Google does it well, I don't see any reason why they can't compete with Evernote. Evernote has been stuck in the same place for a few years on the desktop and web versions and it doesn't look like anything is going to change soon. In addition Evernote website is sometimes very slow to load both the note taking interface and shared notes.

WhatsApp - Android App of the Week (1)

With thousands of apps in the Play Store, it does get difficult to find out which apps are really worth it to try. I've decided to write a brief description on a favourite app of mine each and every week.

One of my most used app is WhatsApp (http://goo.gl/R3fmw) which I used as a replacement for SMS. It's a great free way to message your friend over WiFi or mobile network without needing to create any new accounts and add friends. On the other hand WhatsApp used the contact list to find your contacts and you can start messaging straight away.

A recent newly improved UI has further enhanced the messaging experience of WhatsApp. What makes WhatsApp great is the ease with which you can share media with your friend. By sharing an image using the android share menu, a compressed version of the image is immediately sent to your selected contact. It really doesn't come easier than that!

The disadvantage is that WhatsApp is mobile based only, with no counterpart available for PC or MAC. The downside is that most often you still end up typing on your phone while in front of your PC, when you could be utilising a full sized qwerty keyboard.

CyanogenMod 10.1 on Galaxy S3

I've recently decided to just root my Galaxy S3 (i9300) and flash CM 10.1 just to try it out. I must say I've been loving the extra customisability that comes with CM. In addition, I got rid of the annoying notifications to update Samsung Apps that I was never going to use.

I'm completely happy with the ROM except the performance of the camera, especially video capture. The camera gets stuck often and tearing can occasionally be seen in the videos. A sample video with the said tearing can be seen at around 0:23.

One of my favourite new features on 4.2.2 is the lockscreen widgets. I've been using DashClock widget (http://goo.gl/rXvo1) to add a notification style lockscreen widget seen below.

With my experience so far running CM 10.1, I recommend going for it just for the stock android experience. If you are an avid camera user, I would however suggest to keep using the stock Samsung Rom.