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Grammarly

Here’s How You Can Check Your Language Now

January 22, 2016 General Technology

What could be apter than using an app to check your language? Just as the ubiquitous spell check became a formidable innovation in the Word doc era, verifying your language has become a necessity for bloggers, serious writers, and students today. Personally, I need to frame my thoughts correctly to sound better in English, and always looking to convey the right meaning but there’s little help to verify what I have written. So while I was watching YouTube an ad caught my attention, and I thought let’s give Grammarly a try. I installed the Mac app (v1.4.20) and here’s my take.

Apart from the concept, my full credit goes to the designer(s) and the developer(s) working behind the curtains on creating the minimalist user-interface. Once you open the app you just cannot resist starting to type a few sentences to test it out (mine ended up becoming a blog post). Though I wasn’t confident earlier on using this app, I was anxious to lose data while moving from the ‘Advanced Issues’ tab back to my writing, but it was seamless. Moreover, if you still fear being hunted down by the ‘grammar nazis’ there’s a handy Chrome extension available on the Web Store to help you check your language in emails, social media accounts, and other online docs. It was smooth going moving to and from my write-up on WordPress Blog using this extension while correcting the language in a separate window.

Grammarly has the potential to become the next Evernote for writers, especially useful for students if they open up their premium features to free subscribers, such as checking for plagiarism and improving their word choice which is important to make posts and articles concise and lucid. You can also export your write-up in .txt format though that isn’t a big deal when you can easily copy/paste into a text editor and continue editing. Overall it seems that the approach is to give a hassle free text-editing experience with bare minimum features, even excluding the routine print option for that matter. So for those who would love to check on their language quick and easy, get Grammarly today.

Free The Apple Watch

December 10, 2015 Technology

The Apple Watch was perfectly poised to sweep the industry. It had the goodness of the iPhone/Mac kitty, mainly the apps, the amazing product design and the indisputable quality of the Apple brand. Reasons which are enough for a device like the Apple Watch to own the industry which hadn’t seen much innovation in some time. Some of the early entrants to this arena were no match to the promise of experience and the technology which only Apple could deliver with its first wearable device. Sadly when it arrived it wasn’t the product we had anticipated, it wasn’t an ‘independent’ product. And let me explain.

The rich product basket of Apple including the iMac, the iPod, the iPad, and, the iPhone have existed as sovereign personalities with its own audience. The iPad, iPhone and iPod need the Mac/PC only for syncing content and are pretty much independent devices. Apple with its vast design experience curated an entire domain of great product design with hardware and software. Beginning with the unibody design and later with Yosemite by transforming the skeuomorphic UI with the flat design language. Other features such as HandOff and Continuity, and introduction of Maps, Notes, and Notifications on OSX which brought about a wonderful cohesion of OSX/iOS environments. All this and yet it did not take away the freedom of its users to work independently with these devices. Until the Watch came along. The graphic depicting the Apple devices isn’t honest to the Watch which can’t work without the iPhone.

The Watch as a wearable gadget with a small form factor meant that it would not naturally transition the rich cohesion of experience of the OSX/iOS devices. Although this does not make it an exceptional case when it comes to making it self-reliant within its functions and features. There are other watch devices today which do not need the phone support for offering a better user experience. And sure they may not tote a rich app ‘garden’ like the App Store. For now, let’s free the Watch from the clutches of the iPhone.

Apple’s product design cycle is unclear, if one is to understand that the earlier design iterations of the iPhone and iPad missed some essential features that were common to the devices of its kind. Considering this, the Watch isn’t freewheeling so soon until about a few more design iterations. Let’s hope the wait isn’t too long and painful.

Apple Introduces iPhone

January 10, 2007 Happenings

It was speculated to come for a long time. At the Macworld 2007 keynote at San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced the launch of iPhone, a new age telephone device, which is going to shape the future of telecommunications and put pressure on some of the established players in the field. The iPhone introduces touchscreen navigation (yes..no stylus, only fingers) and uses the power of Mac OS X to run itself. A 2 megapixel camera, a widescreen iPod for music and video lovers, Safari for browsing the internet and Mail for sending emails through the touchscreen keypad, one couldn’t have asked for more from a device that fits in your palm.

Apple Launches MacbookPro

January 11, 2006 Design

Apple MacbookproApple never fails to surprise you. Rather it’s a brand you’d always expect some fresh ideas. At the Macworld conference, Steve Jobs unveiled the new Intel chip based MacbookPro. This is the first product to be launched with Intel based chips after Apple switched from IBM Power PC chips.

The Macbookpros are powered by Intel’s new Core Duo processor technology and promise to be 4 times powerful then the G4s!

Also I was happy to note that my long standing wish of including an FM radio along with the iPods has come true. Apple has introduced an FM remote control with the device so music lovers can now play FM radio stations while the information is flashed on their iPod LCDs. Pretty neat eh! Time to think about buying one now.