I've been using librarywala.com for a while now. They been good. Easy to search and add books, received and picked up on time (nearly always) etc. However, I am kind of done with them. And, I just asked them to cancel my existing membership and figure out if a pro-rated refund on the renewal is possible.

My account was due for renewal sometime around 19Jan2011. I used their online payment gateway to renew it a week before it expired. Sometime in the middle of February I received a call from them urging me to renew my membership. Upon being forwarded the email with the renewal details a somewhat lame, if acceptable excuse came forward ("the system wasn't showing this transaction" - ever wonder why it is always 'the system' ?). But what takes the cake is that yesterday I had a fairly belligerent chap call me up claiming to be an agent of the site and demanding that I either show him a proper receipt of payment of renewal charges or, pay cash. He wasn't interested in the print out of the email which had the renewal charge processing notification. Well, since I wasn't keen on doing that, I told him to check up with the site itself and then revert. I receive another call today urging me to pay cash.

In my book this is ridiculous way of treating customers. I'm done with these folks.

I've been using a Nexus S since end January 2011. In no particular order here are some observations.

• Contrary to expectations the battery life is around 2-3 days for my usage pattern (infrequent WiFi, nearly no bluetooth and no GPS etc)
• The screen is a smudge magnet that is beyond description. The tiniest bit of smudge material creates a layer of unsightly swipes
• The screen area is good for the Kindle App. With the black background white text setting I can actually read books pretty nicely and that is a high usage pattern.
• The display is good and pretty rich if a color rich wallpaper is used.
• The only video I have is Eben Moglen's FOSDEM 2011 keynote and it plays pretty well (I had converted it anyway, read more here)
• Angry Birds, Paper Toss and Alchemy work well :) (as much I installed them for illicit entertainment)
• Touchdown works. Yay !
• The YouTube player is sometimes iffy on high resolution videos
• The TED app makes it easy to listen to a well curated talk list
• The actual physical phone hardware lends itself to a good grip once you can get over the lightness of it all
• The hot spot thing works nicely too. Didn't have more than two devices to try it out with though.The phone tends to heat up slightly.
• The stock browser is a bit of a bore and so I ended up installing and using Opera Mini (although I also installed Opera Mobile)
• The stock Android 2.3 UI is a bit of a vanilla one. In fact I quite liked the tweaks in the UI provided by LG (albeit on 2.2) with the pull down bar allowing one to quickly connect to a GPRS or, move into a Silent mode etc. In fact I am looking for suggestions on alternative launchers.
• The phone doesn't have too many external buttons (there's a power on/off and the volume switch) and that is a bit of a gotcha. When it comes to having to unlock each time to do stuff.
• I haven't had the call drop issue yet.
• Haven't used the phone to record a video and the rear camera works pretty decently (haven't used the flash on it). The front camera, as expected is heavily grainy

When you go out with friends to a restaurant and then want to split the bill a mayhem ensues. Generally there's always a majority who don't have the exact or, near-exact denomination in notes. And so the "you remember to pay me later" etc followed up by generally fussiness about how much is owed by whom etc happens.

So, where's the app that allows me to add the 'handles' of the friend along with the final amount and then everyone gets notified to transfer the money electronically to a specified bank account. In other words, I pay the bill, add the folks who intend to split it up (and thus ensuring even-steven split) and each of them get a notification to "pay me". That is connected to a fund receipt system and hence this inglorious cash exchange at the end of the meal is taken care of.

Where's the app ?