Author: gec

Are you jealous of all of your friends with their fancy Android phones, while you’re stuck with Windows Mobile? Do you wish you could sync your calendar and contacts to gmail just like them? Do you wish there were an easier way to import your contacts from Windows Mobile to Gmail so that when you buy an Android phone you can have it automatically download your contacts? You’re in luck.

For whatever reason, Google Sync seems to be one of the best kept secrets on Windows Mobile. After a download-free, quick, and painless setup, your Windows Mobile phone is syncing contacts, emails, texts, tasks, and calendar events like there’s no tomorrow. You can practically ditch Microsoft MyPhone* if you want. Details about Google Sync can be found on it’s website, http://www.google.com/mobile/sync/ – visit the page for easy instructions on setting the service up for multiple devices. Keep in mind, setting up for Windows Mobile is very easy!

Hey Google! Stop peeking at my data!

Back in May, the story broke that Google had… let’s say “accidentally” captured data from home and business wifi networks. As the “street view” camera cars drove around and mapped a few things, Google admitted they ‘may’ have captured some data from wifi networks in the area. Google had originally said that only data from unencrypted networks and hot spots were captured, and that, according to PC Magazine: “A Google spokesperson said the Street View cars have been collecting the information since 2006 in more than 30 countries… [Google’s Alan Eustace said] ‘As soon as we became aware of this problem, we grounded our Street View cars and segregated the data on our network, which we then disconnected to make it inaccessible.’”

Many, many people have said over and over that a computer can only do what it’s been told to do, and that “mistakes” of this nature don’t happen – and certainly would’ve been noticed more than 4 years ago. If you capture data from wireless networks, you’re going to see a large amount of data – much more than the standard photo data. Someone had to have noticed this. But, fine, whatever. Let’s all accept that Google made a mistake. No harm, no foul, right? So we thought.

Google recently admitted that they may have captured more than just ‘bits and pieces of data’ but entire emails, personally identifiable email address, and even passwords. It’s not the “admission” of this that’s bothering me, it’s the fact that GOOGLE IS STILL ANALYZING THE DATA THEY CLAIMED THEY HAD ACCIDENTALLY CAPTURED! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Stop it! Stop looking at it! Delete it! Demagnetize then shred the hard drives! Lose the data, my data, anybody’s data – four years and 30 countries with of data!

The fact that people are reporting on this, and overlooking the fact that Google is clearly harvesting this data like any other search data that people come to their website and give them or agree to the Terms of Service in their GMail account is absurd! More journalism and technology outlets need to condemn Google’s actions, not just report on them. It is unacceptable that Google is treating this data like anything else in their possession when it was obtained, if not illegally, certainly questionably. Why aren’t more people reporting on that side of the story? I can only assume nobody wants to anger the big machine – but I hope that someone notices what I’ve noticed, and takes Google to task for it.

So in the last 24 hours, we got an announcement about how the HP Slate is finally considered “real” – and that it’s going to cost almost eight hundred bucks. We also recently heard that Samsung’s new Galaxy Tab will be sold at the $600 price mark.

It’s a fundamental fact of hardware sales that you need to be willing to lose some money to get your product “out there.” The problem is companies like HP and Samsung can’t afford to do that. It’s not that they don’t have money in the bank to take a few quarters of losses; the problem is if they do lose money, they have no way to make it back.

In 2008, Sony admitted losing $130 on every PlayStation 3 console sold – and analysts thought it could be much more than that. Even earlier this year, we learned that Sony was still losing $18 for every PS3 sold. It was estimated by BusinessWeek that Microsoft was losing in the neighborhood of $125 on every Xbox & Xbox 360 sold. We have no idea how much the iPad costs to make, and how much money Apple is losing by selling their lowest end model at $500.

Some of you are thinking I’m crazy, wondering why on earth anybody would sell a product they’re going to lose money on. Because they can make it back with services they bundle. When Microsoft launched the original Xbox, it was more of a marketing ploy to lose money – and hope to make the money back by selling games and software licenses. With the PS3 and Xbox 360, they have great money making services like the PlayStation network and Xbox Live to make them money hand over fist. Even the Apple iPad has the App Store.

But what about Slate, Galaxy Tab, and all of the others trying to get in to the market? They will fail. You can’t take a loss when you sell a product like those, because you’re going to be using Google’s “Android Market.” That money goes to Google. If you make a Tablet running Windows 7, you can kiss all hope of making money through software sales goodbye. So if you can’t subsidize the cost of your tablet with anticipated software sales, you can’t price it low enough to compete with the iPad. If you can’t be priced to compete, you can’t expect to succeed.

It is, unfortunately, all too straight forward. This market will continue to be dominated by Apple until Google or Microsoft decides to get in to the hardware game and make the kind of decisions that can only be made if you have another revenue source.

Microsoft is touting Windows Phone 7 as the device that will get you “in, and out, and back to life.” They intend to do this using “tiles” from the main screen of the phone.

Microsoft admits that they are not going to do this instead of downloadable apps like the iPhone or Android phones. However, I find it fascinating at a time when Android is trying to dis-integrate programs from the core operating system. Google has found that having things like “Google Maps” as part of the phone from the get-go, makes it harder to update it independently later. The plan for Google seems to be taking things like Google Maps easier to download and update from the Android Market.

This seems like another case of Microsoft, potentially, being “late to the party.” This is everyone’s biggest fear for what, on many other levels, sounds like an excellent platform. Microsoft is always just a few steps behind, and now that Google has seen troubles with deep integration, and is backing away from it with Gingerbread, Microsoft is walking right down the path that Google just abandoned. While it seems as though everyone who has had hands-on time with Windows Phone 7 devices has been impressed with it, if it does not get the updates people are hoping for, it might just fail. And what could stop it from getting the updates? If Microsoft is making it harder to update by integrating too many things into the main part of the Operating System. Could these handy “tiles” come back to bite them?

While I don’t know if this level of integration is good or bad from a technical stand point, I am excited for Windows Phone 7 and can’t wait to see if it people take to it.

The grand idea of these tiles is so that you can quickly glance at your phone and do what you need to do, without waiting for apps to load and waiting for slow programs, or having to spend so much time flipping between apps. Microsoft demonstrates this in a recent marketing video for Windows Phone 7.

While listening to This Week in Google 58, the table talked about how many billions of minutes have been “wasted” on things like Farmville and other casual games.

The Panel of guests talking on Episode 58 all wished that people would spend less time managing their virtual farms and contributing to something like Wikipedia. My question is, why haven’t we combined the two?

Maybe not wikipedia, but Decentralized Computing programs have simply missed the boat when it comes to getting extra CPU cycles thrown their way. Why should I go out and install, for example, the Folding@home client, when they could have their code inserted into Facebook games and take every few cycles here and there. Then, while I save a baby dolphin on my Happy Island, I could be doing micro-sized work units for things like Folding, Grid.org, SETI@home, BOINC, or whatever is deemed worthy of my computing cycles.

At first, these could be determined by the game designers – later this could be decided by we, the casual gamers – give us the option to choose which program we’re donating our cycles to!

My biggest fear when it comes to this? That the distributed computing folks try to design their own games and get people interested. Don’t! You simply don’t have the magic. I wouldn’t even propose contracting a company to try and design new games that utilize your code in the back-end. What needs to be done is that these “social game” developers need to think of it as their “social responsibility” to work with these distributed computing firms to allow us to give our computing cycles to worthy projects. Meanwhile, all you are doing is what you’re already doing: playing Mafia Wars, Farmville, Happy Island – all the while virtually compounding drugs to combat Cancer, AIDS, or perhaps searching radio frequencies to find intelligent life in other galaxies. Whatever your desired project, you should be able to voluntarily help it out, while not having to think about it. Then your 2.2 Billion Minutes of Virtual Farming could be 2.2 Billion minutes of being socially responsible, green, not wasting CPU cycles, all of that good stuff.

A recent random blog was picked up by some major outlets, saying it knew Why Google needs to pull the plug on Chrome OS. The author feels that, if Chrome doesn’t do well when it debuts on Netbooks, it could spell doom for future Distributions of Linux ever standing a chance at replacing Windows.

While I am a huge Windows fan, I can see obvious benefits to letting Google ship an operating system on a laptop. As it’s been described, Chrome OS would literally be little more than a shell with a web browser out of the box. But therein lies the beauty – it’s nothing at all, it’s the blank slate the Windows users always want. My dislikes of Linux are often how hard it is to get something working, it always relies on me opening a command line to install a package of some kind. Even the easier download services that Ubuntu and others offer don’t seem easy enough. This is where Chrome OS has it’s chance to jump ahead of the curve. An “app store” for the operating system.

After Apple’s hugely successful App Store on the iPhone and iPod Touch, Google knew what they had to do to make Android successful, and quickly became the number 2 smartphone. Why Apple hadn’t put something like this on the Mac itself is beyond me (my largest complaint about the Mac is how little software there is for it, it’s one of the reasons I’ve never bought myself a MacBook). But imagine the Google Chrome OS having 2 icons on the desktop: one that takes you straight to the web, and one that takes you to a simple app-store for Chrome OS. It’s a very straightforward way for you to one-click download and automatically install software for anything from office productivity, to media players, photo editing software, to games. With the ease of a one click install, and with the resources of Google, a large catalog of software at launch, I can see Chrome OS, if done in a form like this, as hugely successful.

However, If Google is really going to rely on their web apps to be their saving grace, it is likely that Chrome OS will be a short lived soiree into the PC Operating System Market for Google. Using Google Docs is nice, but it’s no replacement for having the tools at my disposal. If an installable and local version of Google Docs is available for a one click install, Google will change minds about the complexities of Linux.

All the geeks out there have been reading pro- and anti- iPhone and Flash battles. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, says Flash drains battery life on the iPod. He also claims that it’s the biggest cause of crashes on Mac computers. InfoWorld has even come up with a Peace Plan to try to settle the conflict. One of the thing’s I’m most curious about: why is Adobe so passionate about this battle?

Flash has always been a large part of their business, it’s true, but Flash has not evolved. Since Adobe bought Macromedia in 2005, I feel development from version to version has been fairly static. True, I’m no Flash developer, maybe there have been giant improvements in how it works on the backend, but from what I can see, it’s very stagnant. In 2007, when Microsoft released the Silverlight platform, I expected to see a big push from Adobe – but it never came. Microsoft and NBC (you know, MSNBC), cornered the Olympics and did some amazing things, showing several cameras at one time, in fluid motion. It’s got fantastic performance and it’s turning my regular internet connection in to something beyond magic!

After all of this, only one question keeps coming back in to my mind: why does Adobe care if Flash is killed off? Adobe is clearly losing ground to Silverlight, and, to agree with Apple and everyone else, HTML5 is coming, and you won’t need Silverlight, or Flash, or shockwave, or anything else to play videos, listen to music, or have great interactive experiences online. Why not work HTML5 into other Macromedia / Adobe web development products, such as Dreamweaver and Fireworks. You have a chance to streamline your business model, and make other products thrive, and you’re complaining that you might lose the foothold that exists in Flash. Adobe already has lots of other businesses cornered, like the Acrobat PDF. They have great software i nthe form of the former Syntrillium property, now Adobe Audition. Why focus on this one tiny platform whose days are clearly numbered?

If Adobe’s Dreamweaver & Fireworks applications are promptly and properly updated, I sincerely don’t feel that they should be too sad to see Flash go. While I understand Flash is one of Adobe’s most identifiable brands, but it has problems. In an economy where companies are downsizing for kicks, if you’re forecasters are expecting the Flash team to have a hard time, why not just kill it off?

I guess this whole post is just repetitive and doesn’t really clear anything up for anyone… but I just had to say: I don’t really care if Apple or Adobe wins the argument. But frankly, too bad, Adobe. Flash is on it’s way out. Now go make Dreamweaver better.

To cut to the chase, just view the American Civil Liberties Union facebook quiz. I will explain it in full below.

You might be wondering why this isn’t on the whutsIT Tech Blog (editor’s note: whutsIT was a distinct techblog I was maintaining around this time, it no longer exists), but I don’t consider this a huge PSA. I think most people who will read this know what’s going on when it comes to Facebook, I just think they don’t care. I may be wrong.

Let me explain. Every time you “accept” a quiz, or “send” a drink, or “farm” a ville or whatever you’re doing on Facebook, your information is shared with people you don’t know.

Wait, what? No, really. You’re not just answering stupid questions, and you’re not just clicking on funny pictures, and you’re not just showing your pictures to me. When you “Facebook Connect” with an application, you’re eseentially giving whoever made the application all of the information that you put on Facebook. When I talk about “whoever made the application” I don’t mean your friend that wrote a quiz to send you, it’s whoever made the ‘quiz’ software that your friend used to build the quiz.

If all of this seems too abstract or complex, the ACLU developed a Facebook Quiz which shows you exactly what these companies know about you when you use their “apps.”

Is it something to be concerned about? Potentially. Many of these companies probably don’t care, many more probably don’t have any way of truly harvesting valuable information about you. But very quickly they can get your email address, your friends email addresses, and all kinds of other information that can be used to identify you, spam your inbox, call your phone, send you junk mail, and who knows what else. All without you ever even typing a word.

whutsIT will soon write about Facebook Phishing – in otherwords, what people can do with the information you actually DO type into those quizzes about your friends, family, what kind of kisser you are, etc… you might be surprised at what I can do with that information.

I recently heard this story about kids who text so much their social skills may be starting to suffer. The example given in this story is a teacher who states that students are more likely to ask questions virtually, via email or perhaps some sort of course management system, rather than come up and ask her in person.

I was as socially awkward as they came, in high school. And some teachers petrified me more than others. I would have loved the ability to avoid them! I do not think that text messaging is the reason students don’t particularly enjoy talking to their teachers.

Still, the majority of that article, as well as many others, focus on how much texting teens are doing. Researchers (empowered with tax dollars, surely), teachers, and parents alike stare at kids confused. Several of my friends, who were once convinced that “if they wanted to talk to me, they’d call me” now send well over a thousand texts every month. So, what happened?

I’m one of the haters. I text as little as possible, but it’s still easily 20-30 texts sent every day, with some days going far higher. I remember the first time I got a text message, not knowing my phone was capable of it, circa 2003. I remember building my mobile plan from ten cents per text, to 100 texts a month, to 300 texts a month, to 500, then finally unlimited. I remember proposing to my friends, before unlimited texting plans were available, a device that would forgo voice communication and be used solely for unlimited texting at $40 a month (I still think it’s a good idea). But why have the youngsters taken to texting? I don’t know why it’s so hard for so many to see.

The answer is simple. Teens and younger generations text because it allows us to multi-task. I can carry on multiple different conversations at one time. We are a multi-tasking society, and studies have shown younger generations are far better at it than our elders. What was thought to be a distraction has proven not to as disastrous as once thought, as younger employees browse the internet at work and still get more done than tenured employees who curmudgeonly hate technology. If I call someone, that takes away from my ability to talk to the plethora of other people I may be talking to at that exact same time. Texting also allows for a response later. This isn’t much different than leaving a voice mail or even an email – but the message is wherever you are and the response can be immediately returned.

It seems painfully obvious to me, but I’m sure we’ll continue to see increased usage of texting. We will also continue to see researchers scratch their heads as to why kids avoid social interaction? But I do not think it’s causing our kids to become e-hermits, I think it is almost entirely motivated by the desire and ability of teens to multi-task and interact with multiple people at one time.