24 hrs with Android 4.1 (JellyBeans)

Hi All, 


I have a Sansung Nexus S phone, and it received OTA 4.1 update yesterday. I was previously satisfied with Ice Cream sandwich (4.0), but there are some cool new features in this version... Here are some of the obvious improvements:

1. Voice assisted search - Previous voice search was horrible. I have perfect south indian accent :), and my phone didn't recognize most of my words properly. Now with 4.1 the accuracy is much better. Downside is you need to have network connectivity to use this feature (bummer). On a side note, you can launch apps, write emails, set alarms etc., using your voice commands (assistant ??)
2. Disable notifications from specific apps - I have lot of games from "Glu mobile". They are not that bad, but they do send ads via notifications. In this version, there is a per-application setting, which you can use to disable the notifications.
3. Google Cards, I think they borrowed the concept from winphone, but this is a nice cool feature. It kind of automates some of the frequent tasks you do with your phone. For example, you can add a weather card, traffic card etc.,
4. Good battery life.. I don't have enough data on this, but after ICS update, my battery life took a heavy hit. That seems to have improved a lot with JD.

I will keep playing around with the new version and will post updates. Stay tuned!

Our South Dakota / Mt.Rushmore experience

Last week my wife and I went to Mt.Rushmore (since that was the only attraction that we had planned to visit when we were in Minnesota). First as I had mentioned in the previous post we had a drama with the hotel room booking because of Hotwire.com, but no thanks to them still the trip was wonderful.


This was my first country side trip in west. I didn't know the concept of "Deserted Highways", until now. I got a chance to experience it first hand. We started out on Friday, since we didn't have anything planned for the weekend, and decided to dive about 460+ miles from Minnesota. Last 120+ miles were in country road, because of the town I selected, for the hotel I had selected. I got to tell every one, that was the best experience ever!! I really loved it!! For 120 + miles, we barely saw 4 cars ! We saw a deer standing in the middle of the road like that's totally normal :) Eventhough I could see some mail boxes every few miles, I am pretty sure that the houses are atleast a mile from the high way, since I couldn't see them. Then, there was this ominous silence, I don't hear anything, (apart from the sound of my car and the insects cripping). Finally when we reached the motel at around 1:30 am, I was surprised to see that there was a town in the middle of nowhere, just like the movies. 


We started the next morning, after some rest, and we happened to see all the country roads that we had never seen before. We saw lots of hay rolled in to nice circular wheel like structure, cut nicely :). We even took some pictures. While we were taking pictures, a gentleman stopped the car and kindly asked if we were having car trouble.. Wow!! I have never seen such nice people in NY/NJ before! and finally we drove around 230+ miles and reached Mt.Rushmore. It was OK, compared to the ancient architectural marvels in Tamil Nadu and India, that was not that great, but anyway, they had done something creatively. We didn't spend much time there, we decided to start after spending an hour there.


While driving back, there were electrical trouble in the car...I was scared straight. We still had about 500+ miles to go, and the odo-meter and the speed-o-meters kept locking up. Surprisingly, when we removed the snapshot device, that problem went away magically. More on that in a later post [may be.. I am busy these days, so I might not have time :( ]. Finally we reached Minnesota at around 12 am Sunday. Even though I had been in the U.S for about 6 years, I have never seen gangsters before. While I was filling up my car in Minnesota, a car full of tatoo'd gentleman [whom I presume belong to some gang, because of tattoo's.. if you are not, sorry guys!!] pulled up in the pump next to us. That was the first time I saw gangsters, face to face. They didn't speak to me, they were minding their own business. I just got gas and went home at around 2 am.


Overall this was one of the best weekends in our lives! Me and my wife were completely satisfied and felt that we achieved something in this trip. I will try to update as we travel more guys.. See ya all in the next post..

HotWire.com is a Scam!

Hi Friends!


I recently had a horrible experience with Hotwire .com, which I thought I will share with you all. I had to recently move to Minnesota from New Jersey and had to drive 1200 miles. I decided to take a break after driving half of the distance and planned well ahead. I booked a hotel using Hotwire.com and it was supposed to be a 4 star hotel, for $94+taxes. First when I stepped in to the hotel, I was in shock! it was a cheap motel, all the furniture were old, beds were squeaky, and the TV was a 1990's big-CRT TV!. Then I checked the rate on hotels.com for the same hotel, it was listed at $62+taxes, total=$72. Curious, I searched in HotWire.com again. It was still offering the "Best Value", for the same hotel for $94!. When I got to my destination, I called up their customer service. First their customer service was rude (I have called them many times before, I thought those were isolated incidents, but behold, no matter what time I call, I get a rude CSR!). Then they started giving excuses that they cannot lower the star ratings for a hotel, they calculate the ratings from Hotels.com and other sites!! Anyway finally she told the price match guarantee is not valid since I am calling after 48 hr window (It was 48hrs from the date of booking, not the date of staying). I thought that was wired, and decided to write them an email, but there was no response whatsoever. Then I decided to let it go, and thought that it was again an isolated incident.


Last week, I had to travel to SD, and decided to use hotels.com this time. Sure enough, I could get a booking at Super8 for a decent price of $75+approx 7 in taxes=$82. Curious, I compared the rates at hotwire.com. They were listing only the area as usual, but I could find out which hotel that was, since it was a small town and it was the only motel in that area. Hotwire's price was $68 + $14 in taxes and fees!!! the total was again same $82, disguised as a lower price. Note that hotels.com has lot of rewards program and hotwire has none. So, I realized, I had been scammed all these years when I had been using hotwire.com for my bookings. Sure enough their prices might be $2 or so less after the final calculation, but in the end, their customer service is useless and they don't honor their own statements in AD (price match etc.,), they won't let you cancel or change the dates and they don't have any rewards program.




I would suggest everyone to please take a moment to compare the final price before booking at hotwire.com in future to avoid being scammed by their lower price on the front page. I also would never ever use hotwire.com in future.




Let me know your experience as well in the comments area and some tips you use while booking hotels.