This time last year, I was given a Nexus 7 as a birthday gift (I'd hinted really, really strongly!). One year on, Google has released an updated model, and I have a lot better understanding of how the thing works and what it's good at. The new Nexus 7 hasn't been released in Australia yet - but will I upgrade?
I think so. I've come to regard the N7, along with the Roomba, as one of my two most successful "Let's give this a shot and see what it's all about" tech purchases. However, the N7 hasn't achieved this position on the basis of its technology or bang-for-the-buck alone; its significance was to introduce me to the Google ecosystem and I should, perhaps, give a close runner-up award to the Galaxy Nexus phone which I bought as a result of my positive experience with the N7.
I haven't used the N7 as a toy at all. Never watched a movie on it, rarely play music on it, will never play a game on it (I'm not a gamer, unless you count me vs the evil Java compiler as some kind of strategy game).
For me, it's all been about personal organization and having instant access to information wherever I happen to be - in my office, in the kitchen, in front of the TV, in a lecture theatre, in the coffee shop. The apps I use most heavily would be Gmail (I have two business and one university accounts), Google Calendar, and Google Maps, along with Google Drive/Docs/Apps. The latter, especially, has been getting heavy use for writing up course materials and presentations - I do a lot of the heavy lifting on my desktop machines or on a Chromebook I also bought in the "Let's give this a shot and see what it's all about" mind-set, but it's been really useful to have ability to view materials while away from my desk, or to display them on a second (really fourth!) screen while working.
Then there's Evernote, which has also been getting heavy use, especially for mundane things like shopping lists. However, with Google Keep maturing and being standard in Android 4.3, it might take over for those lightweight tasks.
Perhaps the biggest unexpected "killer app" is Google Now, which integrates voice search against the Google Knowledge Graph with before-demand presentation of information cards to organise my day.
And then there's a whole host of other information-handling apps: Wikipedia, Youtube, IMDB for when I'm watching movies (always nice to be able to answer "What else have we seen him in?"), the Guardian for my twice-daily news fix - plus, of course, go41cx and free42 for calculations. And the Kindle app has proved especially useful while dining alone in dimly-lit restaurants recently.
Where has the N7 fallen down, and what would I like to fix? The only thing I would change would be to get a 3G/HSPA+/LTE model next time. Although the N7 is not as dependent on an always-on connection as the Chromebook, and I can get a wi-fi connection all over the university campus, there are times when the longer battery life and larger display of the N7 has made it a better choice for navigation and some other tasks than the Galaxy Nexus phone, which is my "always-connected" device. I suspect that quite a low-cost, low-bandwidth prepaid SIM would be more than adequate, so it needn't break the bank.
The other thing I want to investigate is yet another case, this time with a bluetooth keyboard. While the standard Google keyboard's swype input technique really is quite usable, a more capable keyboard would hugely improve the usability of Evernote and similar apps.
All things considered, I think I'll be queuing up for a 32G/HSPA+ N7 when they finally make it to Australia.
Showing posts with label Android. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Android. Show all posts
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Sunday, April 21, 2013
2013: The Year of the Facebook Mobile Attack?
Facebook has been pushing - if you don't update, you'll receive notifications in your newsfeed - a new version of the Facebook app for Android. I've reluctantly upgraded the version on my Nexus 7, but I'm holding off installing it on my phone. At this point, I'm not sure the increased risk is worth it.
"What risk?", I hear you ask. There's a potential exposure in the new Facebook app; the app requires somewhat looser permissions than the previous version, including - wait for it - the ability to directly call phone numbers. Big red flag here, Facebook. The major form of malware seen to date on Android phones has been apps that use this permission to call premium-rate international numbers, running up a huge phone bill for the victim and delivering a nice profit for the attacker.
The need to make phone calls arises from the introduction of the new "Facebook Home" - an app which takes over the home screen of a phone to present a Facebook-centric experience - as well as Facebook Messenger, which integrates Facebook messaging with SMS as well as supporting voice messaging. It's not clear to me why the main Facebook app, which does not support these functions, should also require access to the phone functionality, not to mention the ability to record audio, download files without notification, read your contacts and many other privacy-invading permissions.
At the same time Facebook has been a terrific vector for the spread of malware on the PC, sometimes in the form of infected videos or apps, as well as privacy-invading apps which harvest your profile, contacts or other information or download files.
The message: expect this to spread rapidly to mobile devices. Facebook now exposes a relatively large attack surface, and an attacker who can compromise the Facebook app on Android can use its permissions in a range of creative ways.
2013: the year of the Facebook mobile attack? I hope not, but it looks likely to me.
"What risk?", I hear you ask. There's a potential exposure in the new Facebook app; the app requires somewhat looser permissions than the previous version, including - wait for it - the ability to directly call phone numbers. Big red flag here, Facebook. The major form of malware seen to date on Android phones has been apps that use this permission to call premium-rate international numbers, running up a huge phone bill for the victim and delivering a nice profit for the attacker.
 |
| Properties required by the Facebook app for Android - notice "direct call phone numers" |
The need to make phone calls arises from the introduction of the new "Facebook Home" - an app which takes over the home screen of a phone to present a Facebook-centric experience - as well as Facebook Messenger, which integrates Facebook messaging with SMS as well as supporting voice messaging. It's not clear to me why the main Facebook app, which does not support these functions, should also require access to the phone functionality, not to mention the ability to record audio, download files without notification, read your contacts and many other privacy-invading permissions.
At the same time Facebook has been a terrific vector for the spread of malware on the PC, sometimes in the form of infected videos or apps, as well as privacy-invading apps which harvest your profile, contacts or other information or download files.
The message: expect this to spread rapidly to mobile devices. Facebook now exposes a relatively large attack surface, and an attacker who can compromise the Facebook app on Android can use its permissions in a range of creative ways.
2013: the year of the Facebook mobile attack? I hope not, but it looks likely to me.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Google+: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
I've recently introduced a group of online friends to Google+. We'd mostly met via Facebook, where we'd shared things via a secret group, but disenchantment set in and the group was fractured when some of our number were locked out of their accounts (the reasons for that are not at all straightforward and I won't go into them here).
So a few of us were chatting about how to get around this, and off the top of my head I quipped, "We ought to set up a similar group as a Google+ community". Then I thought, "why not?" and a minute later, I'd done it.
I spent the day intermittently writing short "How-To" posts for the new users I was dragging across from Facebook, and answering their questions, helping them to figure out how to get things done, etc. It's been a couple of days and the experience has given me a better understanding of Google+
Circles. You have to grok circles. Circles have both read and write, or in and out, functionality. You can use circles to filter what you see in your home page - for example, you can suppress a circle from appearing in your Home page stream (great if they are prone to posting NSFW images!). That's the "read" functionality. You can also limit posts to only certain circles so that your doings are not broadcast to the wrong people - that's the "write" functionality, which will be more important to some people (to be honest, I regard anything that I post on a social networking site as public).
The problem is that the importance of circles, and the things one ought to consider when creating them and adding people to them, are not immediately obvious - it's only after you've spent some time fiddling with the various configuration options that their importance becomes apparent.
Now to some good points I've noticed and others have commented on.
Firstly, the Home page has filtering, so you can view just specific circles. Across the top of the home page are buttons for "All", "Friends", "Following", or whatever circles you've created. This means you can choose to see only posts from colleagues during the workday, then spend some time catching up with friends, or reading up on products/technology you're following.
The integration with Gmail, Contacts, Youtube, Blogger, etc. is nice - but only important for users who have already engaged with the Googleverse. It's good for me - I use Google Apps for both business and university purposes, and it was that that led me to get my Google+ profile sorted out and then start using it - but for people looking for a Facebook alternative, the fact that you might have to use some other Google service such as Google Drive to get things done seems odd.
There are some nice usability features; for example, you can drag and drop pictures directly into the "Share what's new..." comment box - there's no need to click on "Add Photos/Video" first. However, on the down side, sharing URL's requires you to click on a link button to get a field, rather than auto-recognising the URL in your text. And Google+ doesn't automatically provide previews of URL's in comments like Facebook does.
The privacy and security options are very granular; this is great if you're willing to take the time to learn and use them. Not every is willing, though - and it can be confusing for the new user, who doesn't know what all these things are.
Communities are essentially equivalent to Facebook groups, and can be made public with no barriers to joining, public with approval for joins, or secret, which will require an invitation to join. A nice feature which Facebook doesn't have is "Categories"; for example, I quickly created a a "Using Google+ And This Community" category where I could post hints and answer questions without overwhelming the main "Discussion" category. Of course, the default view when one logs in is "All posts", which displays everything - and it takes the new user some time to discover and use categories. Until they do, they post everything in the default "Discussion" category and (under "Bad") there's no way for moderators to move posts to the correct category.
It's quiet. I've given up on Twitter; it's been over-run by social media "marketers" who think they're slick, and aren't. Facebook is rapidly heading the same way; my newsfeed is starting to fill with posts from link farmers trying to trap people into granting access to their Facebook profiles. Google+ doesn't have that, as far as I can see. Yes, there are marketers there - I follow a couple of my favourite brands - but so far, it's a pretty well-behaved place.
But there are problems, and it's been obvious as I've introduced these new users.
It's noisy. By default, every post, every comment on a post, every damn thing that happens, fires off an email. There's a notifications on/off button in communities, but that doesn't seem to do much to quieten things down - instead, you have to go to your profile,
Configuration options and settings are spread out in various places, mostly accessible from your Profile, via the gear-wheel icon at top right. Some options are under "Profile and Privacy" (https://www.google.com/settings/privacy) - for example, you can control which people appear in the "People in his/her circle" listing on your profile, on a circle-by-circle basis if you want. But other settings, such as just what "Your Circles" means when you share something with "Your Circles", and the email/SMS notification noise level, are under "Google+" (https://www.google.com/settings/plus). It all gets rather confusing, especially for the new user.
Another big issue is the lack of group chat functionality. Just like Facebook, there's a "Chat" tab at lower right of most pages, but unlike Facebook, you can't add multiple people to the conversation. Googling "Google+ group chat" leads to articles that imply it's possible, but the software has obviously changed since they were written. And the confusion over Google's IM products don't help, there's Google+ Chat, Google Talk, Google Messenger and Google Voice, and they're all different things. In fact, it seems that two different things on different platforms (PC vs Android) can even have the same name even though they're incompatible and not interoperable.
If you really want a multi-way conversation, Google+ pushes you towards "Hangouts" which offer up to 10-way videoconferencing and have some really neat features such as screen-sharing, etc. However, not everyone has a webcam, or even a microphone, or they don't want to be seen. And Hangouts require special software; when you start a hangout (or try to join one?) without the software, you are prompted to download GoogleVoiceAndVideoSetup.exe. The messages seem to imply that the software has installed itself; however I soon discovered that it hadn't, and when I found and ran GoogleVoiceAndVideoSetup.exe, it downloaded and installed the actual code required. At this stage, no-one else in our little group seems to have completed the process and so we haven't actually accomplished a Hangout. If we do, we might well move this feature to the "Good" side of this balance sheet.
File sharing is difficult. Facebook groups have a "Files" tab and even an "Add file" link right at the top of the page. There's nothing like this in Google+ communities. The easiest way to share something seems to be to upload it to Google Drive, make it public and accessible to anyone who has the link, then copy and paste the link into a Google+ post. This is awkward at best, and it also means that the file is stored in an individual user's Drive, rather than storage space that belongs to the community. At the very least, the Share... menu option in Google Drive ought to have options for sharing to Google+ - that functionality already exists in Youtube and could almost be copied and pasted into the Google Drive code base.(Update: it turns out that there may be a button which allows direct sharing to Google+ [or email, Facebook or Twitter], but I don't see it because I'm using the Google Apps version of Google Drive. Just another complication - different people see different versions of the same thing, depending upon which Google services they're signed up for.)
Terminology keeps changing. For example, the term "stream" has fallen into disuse - your "stream" is now your "Home page". And I've already mentioned the confusion over the IM apps.
Functionality keeps changing and is inconsistent. Google+ - and the rest of the Googleverse - is obviously in a constant state of change and flux. New functionality is constantly appearing while older and less-used - but popular with its users - features are liable to disappear. I need only mention Google Reader at this point - but it's an issue I'll return to.
Related to this is the fact that while Google is positioning Google+ as the central hub of their applications and services, at least for identity and profile management, it is not very good as a user-centric dashboard. As one of my friends pointed out, iGoogle was much better for that - but it's due for end-of-life later this year. It's a great pity - Google needs something that provides a single page with widgets for Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, Google+, etc. Ironically, I realised that's what my home screen on the Nexus 7 provides - it would be wonderful if Google could provide a web page that could run the same widgets as Android devices. How about it, Google?
Now we're down to cosmetics - the kind of thing that a bit of CSS fine-tuning could probably fix
Google+ doesn't seem to fit as much information on the page as Facebook does. I say, "seem", because on close inspection they both use the same font size for the main text of posts. Google+ puts its major app icons down the left column while Facebook lists groups, apps and pages there; scrolling up, Facebook shifts it up, leaving empty white space. Over on the right, Google+ lists more "stuff" you might like while Facebook puts a scrolling "ticker" app, which is dense with a smaller font and less white space.
Part of the reason for the less dense appearance of Google+ is its use of boxes around posts and grey shading. Facebook's all-white page is much cleaner looking. Google+ could really use a makeover from a good designer.
Overall, the impression one gets is that Google+ is "geekier" - it's stronger and more innovative on the back end server functionality. There are lots of configuration options, but Google annoys most first-time users by not setting appropriate defaults - there are far too many email notifications and the privacy settings probably aren't set high enough for most users, requiring a good half-hour or more of stumbling around, changing things by trial and error.
I believe that Google+ is going to grow and get better - as more and more users acquire Android devices or switch to using Google Apps and Gmail, they will be assimilated, and the functionality will be refined. But for now, it's still rough round the edges and a bit abrasive for the user switching over from Facebook.
So a few of us were chatting about how to get around this, and off the top of my head I quipped, "We ought to set up a similar group as a Google+ community". Then I thought, "why not?" and a minute later, I'd done it.
I spent the day intermittently writing short "How-To" posts for the new users I was dragging across from Facebook, and answering their questions, helping them to figure out how to get things done, etc. It's been a couple of days and the experience has given me a better understanding of Google+
Neither Good Nor Bad - Just Important
Circles. You have to grok circles. Circles have both read and write, or in and out, functionality. You can use circles to filter what you see in your home page - for example, you can suppress a circle from appearing in your Home page stream (great if they are prone to posting NSFW images!). That's the "read" functionality. You can also limit posts to only certain circles so that your doings are not broadcast to the wrong people - that's the "write" functionality, which will be more important to some people (to be honest, I regard anything that I post on a social networking site as public).
The problem is that the importance of circles, and the things one ought to consider when creating them and adding people to them, are not immediately obvious - it's only after you've spent some time fiddling with the various configuration options that their importance becomes apparent.
The Good
Now to some good points I've noticed and others have commented on.
Firstly, the Home page has filtering, so you can view just specific circles. Across the top of the home page are buttons for "All", "Friends", "Following", or whatever circles you've created. This means you can choose to see only posts from colleagues during the workday, then spend some time catching up with friends, or reading up on products/technology you're following.
The integration with Gmail, Contacts, Youtube, Blogger, etc. is nice - but only important for users who have already engaged with the Googleverse. It's good for me - I use Google Apps for both business and university purposes, and it was that that led me to get my Google+ profile sorted out and then start using it - but for people looking for a Facebook alternative, the fact that you might have to use some other Google service such as Google Drive to get things done seems odd.
There are some nice usability features; for example, you can drag and drop pictures directly into the "Share what's new..." comment box - there's no need to click on "Add Photos/Video" first. However, on the down side, sharing URL's requires you to click on a link button to get a field, rather than auto-recognising the URL in your text. And Google+ doesn't automatically provide previews of URL's in comments like Facebook does.
The privacy and security options are very granular; this is great if you're willing to take the time to learn and use them. Not every is willing, though - and it can be confusing for the new user, who doesn't know what all these things are.
Communities are essentially equivalent to Facebook groups, and can be made public with no barriers to joining, public with approval for joins, or secret, which will require an invitation to join. A nice feature which Facebook doesn't have is "Categories"; for example, I quickly created a a "Using Google+ And This Community" category where I could post hints and answer questions without overwhelming the main "Discussion" category. Of course, the default view when one logs in is "All posts", which displays everything - and it takes the new user some time to discover and use categories. Until they do, they post everything in the default "Discussion" category and (under "Bad") there's no way for moderators to move posts to the correct category.
It's quiet. I've given up on Twitter; it's been over-run by social media "marketers" who think they're slick, and aren't. Facebook is rapidly heading the same way; my newsfeed is starting to fill with posts from link farmers trying to trap people into granting access to their Facebook profiles. Google+ doesn't have that, as far as I can see. Yes, there are marketers there - I follow a couple of my favourite brands - but so far, it's a pretty well-behaved place.
The Bad
But there are problems, and it's been obvious as I've introduced these new users.
It's noisy. By default, every post, every comment on a post, every damn thing that happens, fires off an email. There's a notifications on/off button in communities, but that doesn't seem to do much to quieten things down - instead, you have to go to your profile,
Configuration options and settings are spread out in various places, mostly accessible from your Profile, via the gear-wheel icon at top right. Some options are under "Profile and Privacy" (https://www.google.com/settings/privacy) - for example, you can control which people appear in the "People in his/her circle" listing on your profile, on a circle-by-circle basis if you want. But other settings, such as just what "Your Circles" means when you share something with "Your Circles", and the email/SMS notification noise level, are under "Google+" (https://www.google.com/settings/plus). It all gets rather confusing, especially for the new user.
Another big issue is the lack of group chat functionality. Just like Facebook, there's a "Chat" tab at lower right of most pages, but unlike Facebook, you can't add multiple people to the conversation. Googling "Google+ group chat" leads to articles that imply it's possible, but the software has obviously changed since they were written. And the confusion over Google's IM products don't help, there's Google+ Chat, Google Talk, Google Messenger and Google Voice, and they're all different things. In fact, it seems that two different things on different platforms (PC vs Android) can even have the same name even though they're incompatible and not interoperable.
If you really want a multi-way conversation, Google+ pushes you towards "Hangouts" which offer up to 10-way videoconferencing and have some really neat features such as screen-sharing, etc. However, not everyone has a webcam, or even a microphone, or they don't want to be seen. And Hangouts require special software; when you start a hangout (or try to join one?) without the software, you are prompted to download GoogleVoiceAndVideoSetup.exe. The messages seem to imply that the software has installed itself; however I soon discovered that it hadn't, and when I found and ran GoogleVoiceAndVideoSetup.exe, it downloaded and installed the actual code required. At this stage, no-one else in our little group seems to have completed the process and so we haven't actually accomplished a Hangout. If we do, we might well move this feature to the "Good" side of this balance sheet.
File sharing is difficult. Facebook groups have a "Files" tab and even an "Add file" link right at the top of the page. There's nothing like this in Google+ communities. The easiest way to share something seems to be to upload it to Google Drive, make it public and accessible to anyone who has the link, then copy and paste the link into a Google+ post. This is awkward at best, and it also means that the file is stored in an individual user's Drive, rather than storage space that belongs to the community. At the very least, the Share... menu option in Google Drive ought to have options for sharing to Google+ - that functionality already exists in Youtube and could almost be copied and pasted into the Google Drive code base.(Update: it turns out that there may be a button which allows direct sharing to Google+ [or email, Facebook or Twitter], but I don't see it because I'm using the Google Apps version of Google Drive. Just another complication - different people see different versions of the same thing, depending upon which Google services they're signed up for.)
Terminology keeps changing. For example, the term "stream" has fallen into disuse - your "stream" is now your "Home page". And I've already mentioned the confusion over the IM apps.
Functionality keeps changing and is inconsistent. Google+ - and the rest of the Googleverse - is obviously in a constant state of change and flux. New functionality is constantly appearing while older and less-used - but popular with its users - features are liable to disappear. I need only mention Google Reader at this point - but it's an issue I'll return to.
Related to this is the fact that while Google is positioning Google+ as the central hub of their applications and services, at least for identity and profile management, it is not very good as a user-centric dashboard. As one of my friends pointed out, iGoogle was much better for that - but it's due for end-of-life later this year. It's a great pity - Google needs something that provides a single page with widgets for Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, Google+, etc. Ironically, I realised that's what my home screen on the Nexus 7 provides - it would be wonderful if Google could provide a web page that could run the same widgets as Android devices. How about it, Google?
The Ugly
Now we're down to cosmetics - the kind of thing that a bit of CSS fine-tuning could probably fix
Google+ doesn't seem to fit as much information on the page as Facebook does. I say, "seem", because on close inspection they both use the same font size for the main text of posts. Google+ puts its major app icons down the left column while Facebook lists groups, apps and pages there; scrolling up, Facebook shifts it up, leaving empty white space. Over on the right, Google+ lists more "stuff" you might like while Facebook puts a scrolling "ticker" app, which is dense with a smaller font and less white space.
Part of the reason for the less dense appearance of Google+ is its use of boxes around posts and grey shading. Facebook's all-white page is much cleaner looking. Google+ could really use a makeover from a good designer.
Summing Up
Overall, the impression one gets is that Google+ is "geekier" - it's stronger and more innovative on the back end server functionality. There are lots of configuration options, but Google annoys most first-time users by not setting appropriate defaults - there are far too many email notifications and the privacy settings probably aren't set high enough for most users, requiring a good half-hour or more of stumbling around, changing things by trial and error.
I believe that Google+ is going to grow and get better - as more and more users acquire Android devices or switch to using Google Apps and Gmail, they will be assimilated, and the functionality will be refined. But for now, it's still rough round the edges and a bit abrasive for the user switching over from Facebook.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Do Androids Dream?
Good question. But certainly, not of electric sheep.
I've now had a couple of months with the Google Nexus 7 tablet, and a month or so with the Galaxy Nexus phone, which I bought to match it (you don't want to know how dumb my previous 'smart' phone was). It's been an interesting experience.
While the Nexus 7 hardware represents excellent bang for the buck, the experience hasn't been about the hardware at all. Nor, strangely enough, has it been primarily about the Android Jelly Bean software. It's been about what lies behind it: Google.
In recent years, I've relied heavily on the aging infrastructure of my home office: Lotus Domino servers for email, calendar, web server and various home-grown applications, such as my bibliographic database and PhD work journal, augmented by CentOS boxes running a lot of standard open-source apps for mail, etc. The whole thing was fun to set up, useful for learning and an utter pain in the rear to keep running. Even more nerve-wracking was the fact that my wife's business depended upon it, and any system failures would have devastating consequences.
So I set about a long-term plan to get off it. The first step was to move the email and calendar off Notes/Domino and over to Google Docs. I did this first with my wife's business, and it worked so well that I soon moved my email over. Rather than Notes on the desktop, we switched to the combination of Mozilla Thunderbird with the Lightning calendar plugin with Google provider, and the gContactSync plugin for contact synchronization. The migration proved fortuitous, for a couple of months later a hard drive in our main Domino server died - but by then, it was only running my web site (which I am still working on migrating - another story).
The bibliographic database was replaced with Zotero (http://www.zotero.org) and the work journal shifted to Evernote (http://evernote.com/).
So, it was with this migration achieved that I decided to explore the Nexus 7 (which actually arrived as a birthday gift from my better half). Although I had initially planned to use it as a reading device like the Kindle, as well as maybe to play music, etc. in practice it turns out to be a portable Google box. Initial setup requires a Google account (Gmail or Google apps) but the Nexus happily deals with my three accounts (two businesses, plus university email/calendar). All the calendars are merged but can be turned on and off individually). I quickly installed Evernote and found it to be the perfect complement to my desktop usage (which replicates between my home and work desktops and notebook, the way that Lotus Notes used to).
The lack of wireless broadband (3G/4G/LTE) soon led me to consider upgrading my phone. Kogan (http://www.kogan.com) had the Galaxy Nexus at only $379 - perhaps because the Nexus is under-rated by comparison with the newer Galaxy S III - and since it is the reference platform for Android phones, guaranteed to have the newest version of Android available first, and my existing Telstra contract was nowhere near running out, I decided this was the way to go. The phone came with Ice Cream Sandwich installed, and I left it like that for a few days, but soon unlocked the boot loader and flashed it with the Google factory image of Jelly Bean, so that it matched the Nexus 7. The decision to do this was driven by one key feature of Jelly Bean which makes it a killer: Google Now.
It's hard to describe the impact Google Now has on your time management and phone usage. Here's a little example, which illustrates how it integrates with other Google services:
A company I do some work for wanted me to sit in on a meeting with a prospective client in North Sydney. So, I made sure that my contact there was in my Google Contacts, and scheduled the meeting. Because we would need to go over a few things before the meeting with the client, we'd need to get together somewhere nearby - but where? Google Local provided a list of nearby coffee shops, so I schedule a pre-meeting meeting at one of them. Parking could be a problem, but Google Local sorted that out, too.
I live around 25 minutes drive from North Sydney, and sure enough, about half an hour before the pre-meeting, the Nexus 7 chimed that it was time to leave. I've previously noticed from experiments that Google Maps and Navigate have good information on traffic density, and will pick the best route - it can offer me at least two different routes to work, for example. So I clipped the Galaxy Nexus into a windscreen mount and let it navigate me to the car park, and once out on the street, I used it to find the coffee shop. Shortly before the client meeting, it alerted us in time to walk there, and I used Evernote on the N7 to take conference notes - which I then emailed to my client.
It's the ability of Google Now to present information before you need it that is so radical. There's an article in MIT Technology Review that stresses this point (http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429345/googles-answer-to-siri-thinks-ahead/) as well as an interesting article on Google's Knowedge Graph (http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429442/google-puts-its-virtual-brain-technology-to-work/).
The Knowledge Graph lies behind some of Jelly Bean's other neat features. For example, while using it for navigation, I'd noticed that the voice prompts include information read from road signs - this is obtained from the Google Street View camera cars and integrated into Google's maps databases.
The other really neat Jelly Bean feature that depends upon the Knowledge Graph is voice search:
I haven't done a direct comparison with Siri on the iPhone, but I suspect she wouldn't come out of it too well.
Apart from these killer features, there are lots of other things to like about the Galaxy Nexus / Nexus 7 combination: transparent synchronization of all contacts, email, etc. It's not without problems - for example, each of my Google accounts contains my wife as a contact, with various different email addresses (because we're in each others' businesses and they're both now Google Apps domains), but Google also wants Google+ to become a central feature of the Google world - so my better half has wound up with multiple entries in my consolidated "People" app, and Gmail invariably picks the wrong email address when I start to type her name. However, it's rather cool to see someone's face, picked up from Google+, when they ring you.
I'm learning to love Google+, and I'm coming to agree with those who say that it's been a sleeper that is now rapidly growing to rival Facebook. I have very different circles on G+ compared to groups on FB, so there's no rivalry at this point. However, there's no doubt that the tight integration of Google+ with the other parts of the Google ecosystem and especially with the Android apps makes it far more functional than Facebook. For example, scheduling an event through Google+ puts it straight into the calendar, and on arrival at the event, it prompts to put the phone's camera into "party mode" in which every photo is automatically uploaded to the Google+ event page for sharing with the invitees.
Similarly, there's tight integration with Blogger/Blogspot, Youtube, etc. - all of which are supported on the Android devices. This does lead to one of the other sources of pain: getting your Gmail accounts sorted out. Both my wife and I had ordinary Gmail accounts, started before we'd migrated our business email to Google Apps. I'd started this blog using my old Gmail account, and she'd started her blog using her old Gmail account. Now, while I was easily able to add my new Gmail account to this blog and then take over administration - I want to do everything while signed in as me, myself and I, just one account - for some reason she ran into terrible trouble doing the same process. At one point, we thought she'd completely lost access to her blog - months of blog entries effectively lost - and we had to create yet another Gmail account for her as part of the transition. It was a tricky, nerve-wracking process, which leads to another major recomemendation:
Before you buy a Nexus device - phone or tablet - make sure that you get your Google accounts consolidated, rationalized and squared away, with everything running smoothly with one primary account you intend to use. Multiple accounts are certainly possible and useful - as I say, I have two business accounts and one university account - but you really want to have as much as possible consolidated to one primary account.
I do use the Nexus 7 for other things: I have the Kindle app for various books, especially textbooks, and I use Free42 and go41c as replacements for my trusty - but aging - Hewlett-Packard programmable calculators. I dabble on Twitter using Slices, and I shop on eBay using the official app. I even use the Galaxy Nexus to talk to people, occasionally, but I have probably taken more photos than made calls, to date.
However, for most applications, it seems that most of my data - certainly, most of the data that organizes my life - has moved into the cloud. I access it via a conventional computer, or I access it via the tablet, or I access it via the phone - but in most cases, it seems that Google has it, and places it before me before I need it.
So, to answer the question: No, I don't think Androids dream - in fact, I'm not sure Androids even sleep.
I've now had a couple of months with the Google Nexus 7 tablet, and a month or so with the Galaxy Nexus phone, which I bought to match it (you don't want to know how dumb my previous 'smart' phone was). It's been an interesting experience.
While the Nexus 7 hardware represents excellent bang for the buck, the experience hasn't been about the hardware at all. Nor, strangely enough, has it been primarily about the Android Jelly Bean software. It's been about what lies behind it: Google.
In recent years, I've relied heavily on the aging infrastructure of my home office: Lotus Domino servers for email, calendar, web server and various home-grown applications, such as my bibliographic database and PhD work journal, augmented by CentOS boxes running a lot of standard open-source apps for mail, etc. The whole thing was fun to set up, useful for learning and an utter pain in the rear to keep running. Even more nerve-wracking was the fact that my wife's business depended upon it, and any system failures would have devastating consequences.
So I set about a long-term plan to get off it. The first step was to move the email and calendar off Notes/Domino and over to Google Docs. I did this first with my wife's business, and it worked so well that I soon moved my email over. Rather than Notes on the desktop, we switched to the combination of Mozilla Thunderbird with the Lightning calendar plugin with Google provider, and the gContactSync plugin for contact synchronization. The migration proved fortuitous, for a couple of months later a hard drive in our main Domino server died - but by then, it was only running my web site (which I am still working on migrating - another story).
The bibliographic database was replaced with Zotero (http://www.zotero.org) and the work journal shifted to Evernote (http://evernote.com/).
So, it was with this migration achieved that I decided to explore the Nexus 7 (which actually arrived as a birthday gift from my better half). Although I had initially planned to use it as a reading device like the Kindle, as well as maybe to play music, etc. in practice it turns out to be a portable Google box. Initial setup requires a Google account (Gmail or Google apps) but the Nexus happily deals with my three accounts (two businesses, plus university email/calendar). All the calendars are merged but can be turned on and off individually). I quickly installed Evernote and found it to be the perfect complement to my desktop usage (which replicates between my home and work desktops and notebook, the way that Lotus Notes used to).
The lack of wireless broadband (3G/4G/LTE) soon led me to consider upgrading my phone. Kogan (http://www.kogan.com) had the Galaxy Nexus at only $379 - perhaps because the Nexus is under-rated by comparison with the newer Galaxy S III - and since it is the reference platform for Android phones, guaranteed to have the newest version of Android available first, and my existing Telstra contract was nowhere near running out, I decided this was the way to go. The phone came with Ice Cream Sandwich installed, and I left it like that for a few days, but soon unlocked the boot loader and flashed it with the Google factory image of Jelly Bean, so that it matched the Nexus 7. The decision to do this was driven by one key feature of Jelly Bean which makes it a killer: Google Now.
A company I do some work for wanted me to sit in on a meeting with a prospective client in North Sydney. So, I made sure that my contact there was in my Google Contacts, and scheduled the meeting. Because we would need to go over a few things before the meeting with the client, we'd need to get together somewhere nearby - but where? Google Local provided a list of nearby coffee shops, so I schedule a pre-meeting meeting at one of them. Parking could be a problem, but Google Local sorted that out, too.
I live around 25 minutes drive from North Sydney, and sure enough, about half an hour before the pre-meeting, the Nexus 7 chimed that it was time to leave. I've previously noticed from experiments that Google Maps and Navigate have good information on traffic density, and will pick the best route - it can offer me at least two different routes to work, for example. So I clipped the Galaxy Nexus into a windscreen mount and let it navigate me to the car park, and once out on the street, I used it to find the coffee shop. Shortly before the client meeting, it alerted us in time to walk there, and I used Evernote on the N7 to take conference notes - which I then emailed to my client.
It's the ability of Google Now to present information before you need it that is so radical. There's an article in MIT Technology Review that stresses this point (http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429345/googles-answer-to-siri-thinks-ahead/) as well as an interesting article on Google's Knowedge Graph (http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429442/google-puts-its-virtual-brain-technology-to-work/).
The Knowledge Graph lies behind some of Jelly Bean's other neat features. For example, while using it for navigation, I'd noticed that the voice prompts include information read from road signs - this is obtained from the Google Street View camera cars and integrated into Google's maps databases.
The other really neat Jelly Bean feature that depends upon the Knowledge Graph is voice search:
I haven't done a direct comparison with Siri on the iPhone, but I suspect she wouldn't come out of it too well.
Apart from these killer features, there are lots of other things to like about the Galaxy Nexus / Nexus 7 combination: transparent synchronization of all contacts, email, etc. It's not without problems - for example, each of my Google accounts contains my wife as a contact, with various different email addresses (because we're in each others' businesses and they're both now Google Apps domains), but Google also wants Google+ to become a central feature of the Google world - so my better half has wound up with multiple entries in my consolidated "People" app, and Gmail invariably picks the wrong email address when I start to type her name. However, it's rather cool to see someone's face, picked up from Google+, when they ring you.
I'm learning to love Google+, and I'm coming to agree with those who say that it's been a sleeper that is now rapidly growing to rival Facebook. I have very different circles on G+ compared to groups on FB, so there's no rivalry at this point. However, there's no doubt that the tight integration of Google+ with the other parts of the Google ecosystem and especially with the Android apps makes it far more functional than Facebook. For example, scheduling an event through Google+ puts it straight into the calendar, and on arrival at the event, it prompts to put the phone's camera into "party mode" in which every photo is automatically uploaded to the Google+ event page for sharing with the invitees.
Similarly, there's tight integration with Blogger/Blogspot, Youtube, etc. - all of which are supported on the Android devices. This does lead to one of the other sources of pain: getting your Gmail accounts sorted out. Both my wife and I had ordinary Gmail accounts, started before we'd migrated our business email to Google Apps. I'd started this blog using my old Gmail account, and she'd started her blog using her old Gmail account. Now, while I was easily able to add my new Gmail account to this blog and then take over administration - I want to do everything while signed in as me, myself and I, just one account - for some reason she ran into terrible trouble doing the same process. At one point, we thought she'd completely lost access to her blog - months of blog entries effectively lost - and we had to create yet another Gmail account for her as part of the transition. It was a tricky, nerve-wracking process, which leads to another major recomemendation:
Before you buy a Nexus device - phone or tablet - make sure that you get your Google accounts consolidated, rationalized and squared away, with everything running smoothly with one primary account you intend to use. Multiple accounts are certainly possible and useful - as I say, I have two business accounts and one university account - but you really want to have as much as possible consolidated to one primary account.
I do use the Nexus 7 for other things: I have the Kindle app for various books, especially textbooks, and I use Free42 and go41c as replacements for my trusty - but aging - Hewlett-Packard programmable calculators. I dabble on Twitter using Slices, and I shop on eBay using the official app. I even use the Galaxy Nexus to talk to people, occasionally, but I have probably taken more photos than made calls, to date.
However, for most applications, it seems that most of my data - certainly, most of the data that organizes my life - has moved into the cloud. I access it via a conventional computer, or I access it via the tablet, or I access it via the phone - but in most cases, it seems that Google has it, and places it before me before I need it.
So, to answer the question: No, I don't think Androids dream - in fact, I'm not sure Androids even sleep.
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