Google exec claims Chrome is the world's most popular browser - Computerworld

Computerworld - Google yesterday claimed that its Chrome is the world's most popular browser, interceding for the first time in the dispute over browser usage share.

"According to all our metrics and everything we see out there, Chrome is the most popular browser in the world," said Sundar Pichai, vice president of Chrome, in remarks at the second day of Google I/O, the company's annual developer conference.

Pichai's claim was bolder than the one he made last month at the Wall Street Journal's All Thing Digital conference, when he said, "It's fair to say we are No. 1 or [just] barely No. 2 in all countries in the world."

During that interview with Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg, Pichai also said, "Our internal data corresponds pretty well to what StatCounter reported."

StatCounter, an Irish company that supplies website analytics tools -- and uses customers' sites to track browser usage via page views -- said that last month Chrome for the first time surpassed Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) as the globe's most widely-used browser.

According to StatCounter, Chrome accounted for 32.4% of all page views in May, beating IE's cumulative 32.1%.

Since then, both StatCounter and Net Applications, a U.S. Web measurement firm that also publishes browser statistics, have taken shots at each other's methodologies, each arguing that their numbers paint a more accurate picture of browser share.

The root cause of the bickering: Chrome's purported rise to the top of the browser chart.

After StatCounter's knock earlier this month, Microsoft shot back, defending Net Applications and chastising StatCounter for what it called "a personal attack" on Roger Capriotti, who heads Microsoft's marketing efforts for IE.

Today, Microsoft declined to comment on Pichai's claim that Chrome is the planet's most popular browser.

However, a spokeswoman again said Microsoft stood by Net Applications. "We look to Net Applications for the most accurate position on browser market share," she said in an email replay to questions, and pointed to a March blog by Capriotti, the same post that riled StatCounter earlier this month.

Microsoft is a Net Applications customer and, like many other companies, pays the research firm for access to browser usage data that Net Applications does not offer the public or the media.

Although the month is not over, StatCounter currently has Chrome's share for June at 32.7%, a three-tenths of a percentage point increase from the month before, and pegged IE's at 32.3% for June, a two-tenths of a point climb.

The gap between the two browsers -- three-tenths of a point in May -- grew to four-tenths of a percentage point in June by StatCounter's preliminary figures.

Net Applications will not publish its June figures until Sunday, July 1.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Read more about Browsers in Computerworld's Browsers Topic Center.

FTC investigating Google over Motorola patents, says report - CNET

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Google's Motorola Mobility unit is improperly blocking access to industry-standard technology that should be licensed to competitors according to traditional industry and legal practice, Bloomberg reports.

Citing unnamed sources, the news agency said the FTC has "issued a civil investigative demand, which is similar to a subpoena" to Google. The government is also reportedly seeking information from Apple and Microsoft.

The issue involves so-called frand patents -- "fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory" -- that cover technology essential to the smooth operation of an industry. As CNET's Roger Cheng has explained, the idea "is based on the principle that fair licensing of intellectual property is often needed because sometimes certain ideas and patents just need to be shared for everything to work together properly" -- i.e., for things like smartphones from rival companies to work with each other. In a kind of quid pro quo arrangement, companies that produce technology that's adopted by the industry as a standard agree to license that technology at a fair rate.

Lately however, Google rivals, such as  Microsoft and Apple, have been crying foul over Google's and Motorola Mobility's willingness to play by these rules.

Last month, a judge for the U.S. International Trade Commission, a federal agency with the power to enforce bans on products shipping to the U.S., said Microsoft's Xbox console should not be allowed into the states because it infringed on Motorola patents -- a determination the judge had made in an earlier ruling. In response to that earlier ruling, Microsoft told CNET that it "remain[ed] confident the commission will ultimately rule in Microsoft's favor in this case and that Motorola will be held to its promise to make its standard-essential patents available on fair and reasonable terms."

Not long after the recommendation for an Xbox ban, the Federal Trade Commission sent a letter to the ITC saying efforts to block imports of the Xbox and of Apple's iPhone could cause "substantial harm" to consumers, competition, and innovation, and suggested that companies should be limited in their ability to block competitors' imports based on frand patents.

And not long after the FTC sent its letter, a federal judge presiding over a different case questioned an Apple bid for a ban against Motorola, but at the same time chastised Motorola's legal team for its own injunction strategy, saying, "I don't see how you can have injunction against the use of a standard-essential patent." In later throwing out the case -- in what was ultimately a win for Motorola -- the judge nevertheless made a point of calling attention to the frand issue, saying, "I don't see how, given FRAND, I would be justified in enjoining Apple from infringing the '898 [patent] unless Apple refuses to pay a royalty that meets the FRAND requirement."

In its report today, Bloomberg said the FTC investigation is also looking at Google's decision to continue Motorola lawsuits that involve frand patents. When Google closed its acquisition of Motorola, back in February, it promised to fairly license Motorola patents.

Bloomberg said Microsoft confirmed that it had received the FTC's civil investigative demand but declined to comment further. The news agency also said that Apple and the FTC declined to comment on the investigation, and that a Google representative said she couldn't immediately comment.

In April, the European Commission opened an investigation based largely on complaints from Apple and Microsoft on whether Motorola had breached its promise to offer fair licensing of frand patents.

Bloomberg's report today said Kirk Dailey, vice president of intellectual property for Motorola Mobility, said on June 20 that Microsoft and Apple "seemingly won't accept any price" for licensing frand patents held by Motorola.

CNET has contacted the FTC, Google, Apple, and Microsoft for comment, and we'll update this article when we hear back.

Geeks from a plane: How Google pulled off sky diving stunt over San Francisco - Daily Democrat

It was the stunt heard 'round the world: On Wednesday, as Google (GOOG) co-founder Sergey Brin prepared to promote his latest pet project, a team of sky divers leapt from a zeppelin hovering over San Francisco's Moscone Center, landed on the roof and hand-delivered to Brin a pair of Google's "Project Glass" computing glasses -- all while connected in real-time to the Internet so those below could see the action from the divers' perspective.

It was such a hit that on Thursday, the company did it again -- and, breaking the maxim that good magicians never reveal their tricks, let slip the details of how they pulled it off.

The death-defying demonstration started as a tongue-in-cheek suggestion about six weeks ago. A team of Ph.D.'s and computer scientists, taken by the challenge, started working full-time on how to send a signal to a tiny, head-mounted computer screen 4,000 feet in the air.

"It's too high for cell coverage, and regular Wi-Fi wasn't reliable enough," said a Google spokesman. "At one point, we used a wok with a Galaxy Nexus phone taped to it."

Meanwhile, the company rustled up some of the world's best professional sky divers, including Palo Alto native J.T. Holmes, who's done jumps for Red Bull and Hotels.com.

(The latter once filmed him booking a hotel room while in free fall.)

Bill Dause, who owns the renowned Parachute Center near Lodi where Holmes and Co. trained for the stunt, likened the degree of difficulty to driving in the Indianapolis 500.

"Winds change, there's updrafts and downdrafts near buildings," said Dause, who's been in the business since 1964 and in some circles is half-jokingly suspected of being parachute legend D.B. Cooper.

Dause said jumping out of the dirigible was key to the stunt's timing. "An airplane has to fly around a big, wide circle," he noted. "With this blimp, they could essentially hover."

Actually, it wasn't a blimp but a zeppelin, operated by Mountain View's Airship Ventures. The giant, helium-filled craft -- one of only two in the world -- docks at Moffett Field near Hangar One, where Brin still hopes to get federal permission to keep his private jets.

Considering that the cheapest seat aboard the airship costs $350 for a 45-minute cruise, and that Holmes and his team went through multiple practices with specialized equipment, it's fair to say the stunt set Google back a few bucks.

"We aren't sharing a dollar figure, but as you can imagine, it was expensive," allowed the company spokesman.

Besides cutting a check, the search giant had to secure the cooperation of Federal Aviation Administration officials in San Jose, Oakland and Washington, D.C., along with that of the San Francisco mayor's office and police and fire departments.

"FAA safety inspectors observed the jumps, and they went off without a hitch," said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the agency. The biggest key was getting FAA permission to let the zeppelin operate with the door open.

"We got very lucky today in that everything went off so seamlessly," Brin said in a posting to his Google+ account -- which, incidentally, features a photo of him sky diving.

Zany stunts, of course, long have been part of Silicon Valley's makeup. At Sun Microsystems, April Fools' pranks included a giant arrow running through the fifth-floor office of CEO Scott McNealy and the disassembling of Chief Scientist Bill Joy's Porsche (which was reassembled on an island in a man-made lake; he had to row out in a dinghy to retrieve it).

Still, Neil Cohen, a veteran valley public relations and marketing guru, said he couldn't' remember a stunt in this weight class.

"With so many moving parts, so much stuff could have gone wrong," he said. "I wonder what the backup plan was."

Contact Peter Delevett at 408-271-3638 or pdelevett@mercurynews.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/mercwiretap.

Copyright 2012 Daily Democrat. All rights reserved.

Geeks from a plane: How Google pulled off sky diving stunt over San Francisco - San Jose Mercury News

It was the stunt heard 'round the world: On Wednesday, as Google (GOOG) co-founder Sergey Brin prepared to promote his latest pet project, a team of sky divers leapt from a zeppelin hovering over San Francisco's Moscone Center, landed on the roof and hand-delivered to Brin a pair of Google's "Project Glass" computing glasses -- all while connected in real-time to the Internet so those below could see the action from the divers' perspective.

It was such a hit that on Thursday, the company did it again -- and, breaking the maxim that good magicians never reveal their tricks, let slip the details of how they pulled it off.

The death-defying demonstration started as a tongue-in-cheek suggestion about six weeks ago. A team of Ph.D.'s and computer scientists, taken by the challenge, started working full-time on how to send a signal to a tiny, head-mounted computer screen 4,000 feet in the air.

"It's too high for cell coverage, and regular Wi-Fi wasn't reliable enough," said a Google spokesman. "At one point, we used a wok with a Galaxy Nexus phone taped to it."

Meanwhile, the company rustled up some of the world's best professional sky divers, including Palo Alto native J.T. Holmes, who's done jumps for Red Bull and Hotels.com.

(The latter once filmed him booking a hotel room while in free fall.)

Bill Dause, who owns the renowned Parachute Center near Lodi where Holmes and Co. trained for the stunt, likened the degree of difficulty to driving in the Indianapolis 500.

"Winds change, there's updrafts and downdrafts near buildings," said Dause, who's been in the business since 1964 and in some circles is half-jokingly suspected of being parachute legend D.B. Cooper.

Dause said jumping out of the dirigible was key to the stunt's timing. "An airplane has to fly around a big, wide circle," he noted. "With this blimp, they could essentially hover."

Actually, it wasn't a blimp but a zeppelin, operated by Mountain View's Airship Ventures. The giant, helium-filled craft -- one of only two in the world -- docks at Moffett Field near Hangar One, where Brin still hopes to get federal permission to keep his private jets.

Considering that the cheapest seat aboard the airship costs $350 for a 45-minute cruise, and that Holmes and his team went through multiple practices with specialized equipment, it's fair to say the stunt set Google back a few bucks.

"We aren't sharing a dollar figure, but as you can imagine, it was expensive," allowed the company spokesman.

Besides cutting a check, the search giant had to secure the cooperation of Federal Aviation Administration officials in San Jose, Oakland and Washington, D.C., along with that of the San Francisco mayor's office and police and fire departments.

"FAA safety inspectors observed the jumps, and they went off without a hitch," said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the agency. The biggest key was getting FAA permission to let the zeppelin operate with the door open.

"We got very lucky today in that everything went off so seamlessly," Brin said in a posting to his Google+ account -- which, incidentally, features a photo of him sky diving.

Zany stunts, of course, long have been part of Silicon Valley's makeup. At Sun Microsystems, April Fools' pranks included a giant arrow running through the fifth-floor office of CEO Scott McNealy and the disassembling of Chief Scientist Bill Joy's Porsche (which was reassembled on an island in a man-made lake; he had to row out in a dinghy to retrieve it).

Still, Neil Cohen, a veteran valley public relations and marketing guru, said he couldn't' remember a stunt in this weight class.

"With so many moving parts, so much stuff could have gone wrong," he said. "I wonder what the backup plan was."

Contact Peter Delevett at 408-271-3638 or pdelevett@mercurynews.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/mercwiretap.

Copyright 2012 San Jose Mercury News. All rights reserved.

MacOS KenDensed: Patent Ping Pong & Happy Birthday, iPhone - The Mac Observer

Apple had a interesting week in court seeing its patent infringement fight with Motorola tossed out, winning an injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet, and hearing the ITC will review a ruling that could potentially lead to an iPhone and iPad sales block in the United States. It’s also the fifth birthday of Apple’s popular iPhone, and Mac OS Ken’s Ken Ray took a few moments to reminisce.

Posner’s Big Goodbye
The Apple versus Motorola case is officially over, at least as far as Judge Richard Posner is concerned.

AllThingsD says Judge Posner dismissed the case from his court last Friday, saying neither Moto nor the all-things-iMaker had been able to prove damages. Additionally the piece says Posner dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning they can appeal the case to a higher court, but they can’t come bother him with it again.

Quoting his ruling,

It would be ridiculous to dismiss a suit for failure to prove damages and allow the plaintiff to refile the suit so that he could have a second chance to prove damages … This case is therefore dismissed with prejudice; a separate order to that effect is being entered today.

And so, the piece says, “for Posner, Apple versus Motorola is finally over. But the companies’ pitched battle continues to rage on, with litigation pending in the

What the world needs now is another lawsuit between Apple and a competing smartphone maker. At least Apple legal thinks so.

And so, Electronista says, Apple last Thursday filed a lawsuit against Taiwanese phone-maker HTC in a Virginia court accusing the company of anticompetitive behavior and abuse of “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” licensing terms on standards-essential patents.

Hard to see how Apple could lose this one. According to Electronista, “The counterclaim … involves patents covering the “4G” LTE protocol … [that] have been described by HTC itself as standards-essential” in a complaint it filed against Apple last summer. HTC went on to claim “that Apple devices contain baseband chips that implement the LTE standard…” which sort of makes the technology sound “standards-essential.”

No date has been set for the case against HTC in Virginia.

The ITC’s Do Over
While a U.S. without iPhones and iPads may seem unthinkable at this point in time, it’s not impossible. Well, it’s possible that new ones might have a hard time getting into the country.

Bloomberg says the U.S. International Trade Commission has agreed to review a ruling against Apple in a patent dispute between the Cupertino-company and Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility.

Earlier this year, ITC Judge Thomas Pender ruled that Apple did infringe a MotoMo-held patent relating to the industry standard for 3G technology used by most phones, and if this sounds familiar, it should. This was the patent infringement â€" or at least the type of patent infringement â€" Judge Richard Posner threw out of his court last week, saying Motorola couldn’t block sales of a product that used standards-essential patents.

Bloomberg says, “The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, members of Congress and Microsoft … have filed papers supporting Apple’s argument that import bans should not be imposed on such patents. Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. mobile-phone service provider, and No. 2 AT&T … filed papers making similar arguments.”

Should the ITC review go against Apple, the piece says it could lead to an import block on the iPhone and the iPad plus cellular. One hates to guess, but it seems more likely that they’ll just agree with everyone except Motorola Mobility instead.

A final ruling on the issue is expected on August 24th.

Denied: Galaxy Tab 10.1
Great big goings on in the Apple v. Samsung case.

AllThingsD says U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh has granted Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction against sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the states.

Quoting her ruling,

Although Samsung has a right to compete, it does not have a right to compete unfairly, by flooding the market with infringing products … While Samsung will certainly suffer lost sales from the issuance of an injunction, the hardship to Apple of having to directly compete with Samsung’s infringing products outweighs Samsung’s harm in light of the previous findings by the Court.

What’s interesting about that ruling: she didn’t used to think so.

A separate piece on the case from Electronista says Judge Koh denied Apple’s first request for a preliminary injunction against the device, though that decision overturned on appeal. But they didn’t actually issue the injunction, sending it back to her to do.

Court fights are funny.

Apple was happy to comment, with spokesperson Kristin Huguet saying, “It’s no coincidence that Samsung’s latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging … This kind of blatant copying is wrong and, as we’ve said many times before, we need to protect Apple’s intellectual property when companies steal our ideas.”

Samsung, on the other hand, not so happy to comment.

Things happened more quickly in the injunction case than just about anyone saw. Apple hadn’t said whether it would pony up the $2.6-million bond to make the preliminary injunction official, though it’s possible that they didn’t say because they were too busy doing it.

Putting up the money, I mean. Not… doing it.

From AppleInsider, “Almost immediately after the company won an injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, Apple posted the necessary $2.6 million bond to block sales of the iPad competitor in the U.S.”

According to the piece, the money means the injunction is in effect. Samsung now has to cease sales of the tablet in the states or face sanctions for contempt of court.

Hello, Nexus 7
I’ve thought for a while now that The Telegraph out of the UK was down on Apple. Their headlines about the company always seem so negative. But I’m beginning to think it’s not Apple the paper is down on, but technology or tech companies in general.

Their headline about Google’s brand new Nexus 7 tablet: “Google tablet: an admission of failure against the Apple iPad.”

I say, that glass is frightfully half empty.

Yes, Google did announce what some might refer to as an iPad killer, though it seems more immediately aimed at Amazon’s Kindle Fire or other Android-based tablets with its 7-inch form factor and its $199 sale price.

According to The Telegraph, the “Nexus” tablet is “an admission that Android has failed to make an impact on Apple’s iPad.”

I’d love to give you a better idea of what the paper thought of Google’s Nexus tablet, but the bulk of the piece was devoted to what a suck-fest tablet makers besides Apple have made of making tablets.

So we’ll go to The Mac Observer, which says, “The device runs Android 4.1, called Jelly Bean, and it features a quad-core Tegra 3 processor and a 12-core graphics processor. The device has a resolution of 1280 x 800 … or 720p in high definition parlance.”

It’s got an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a digital compass, a compass in the stock, and up to 8 hours of batter life. The piece says “It also includes near field communications (NFC) capabilities, and has a 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera.”

While Asus is the tablet’s developer and manufacturer, the Nexus is being marketed as a Google device.

It’ll come with built-in access to all of content available through Google Play, including movies, TV shows, apps, ebooks, magazines, and music.

$199 for the 8-gigabyte model, though an extra 50-bucks’ll get buyers an extra 8 gigabytes. And, for a limited time, people who buy one will get a $25 credit good towards Google Play content, which most people forget Google actually sells.

Pre-orders began yesterday, with delivery expected to start in mid-July.

Happy Birthday, iPhone
And finally this week, it’s the 5th anniversary of the launch of the iPhone.

After months of build-up from its announcement at Macworld 2007, the lines were atrocious, the prices ridiculous, there was no app store… and boy did they go quickly.

I didn’t line up that first night. Ended up taking me two weeks to get my first iPhone.

We called it the “Jesus phone” and while we were kidding, I don’t think we were wrong. I can’t remember who said it first, but I do remember what they said: That in the world of mobile telephony we were looking at a BC/AD moment, when cellphones would be judged as before iPhone or after iPhone.

People said it was over priced. People said it would fail. Now try to find a smartphone that has not been shaped by it in some way.

Wanna talk money?

iMore has Strategy Analytics figuring that since its official launch five years ago, “Apple has generated $150 billion in revenue from their smartphone lineup.” And that does not take into account the iPod touch and the iPad, both of which owe most of what they are to what it was first.

Want some more staggering stats?

BusinessInsider has a few, like Apple’s iPhone business is now bigger than Microsoft. One part of Apple’s business â€" a large part, to be sure â€" but one part of Apple’s business. Bigger than Microsoft.

“The iPhone has destroyed at least three huge companies in the past five years, and has deeply wounded others,” according to the piece. “Thanks to the iPhone, Palm is toast. Research in Motion is toast. Nokia is toast. Microsoft is reeling. Formerly dominant global hardware makers like HP and Dell are reeling. The whole PC-industrial complex is reeling.”

It’s created an entirely new industry and ecosystem, the App Economy, creating “jobs and careers for hundreds of thousands of developers, designers, and other professionals.”

It has changed what people expect a phone to be, as I mentioned earlier, and it’s made Apple “the most valuable and profitable company in the world.”

Not bad, for a five-year-old.

So, do that little guy a favor. Bake it a cake. And if you don’t know how, there’s an app for that. Make it a drink. And if you don’t know how, there’s an app for that. Take it someplace fun. And if you don’t know where, you know how to find it.

Or, if you really want to appreciate it, put it down for 24 hours. Okay 12 hours should be enough, actually. Okay, six. Okay, never mind. Try instead to remember what phones didn’t do before this one, even if you don’t have an iPhone

Then, if you do have an iPhone, hold it up to your face and sing happy birthday. Don’t worry about looking stupid. People will just think you’re singing to someone on the other end of the phone.

And if you haven’t named your iPhone, for Pete’s sake go ahead and do it. It’s five years old. It’s about time you give it a name.

Ken Ray has been in and out of tech news since 1998, writing, producing and presenting for the magazine “Global Technology Business,” BusinessRadio 1220/KBPA in San Francisco, TechTV Radio, and “Rob Black and Your Money” on KRON 4 in San Francisco. He hosts a few podcasts on Apple news and news related to Apple news, including “Mac OS Ken” since 2006, and the call-in show “Mac OS Ken: Live” since 2010. He also used to make bread pudding, but hasn’t in quite a while.

Cloud Leaves Some Tech Giants Seeking a Silver Lining - New York Times

JUNE 2012 may well go down as the month that the tech world entered a new era.

On June 11, showed its next operating system for iPhones and iPads. It offered maps and speech recognition, plus music and movies on iTunes, all tied via the Internet to Apple’s “cloud” of servers.

A week later, , known better for software, demonstrated the Surface tablet, its answer to the . The Surface interacts with both the Web and Microsoft’s cloud, called Windows Azure. And, last Wednesday, introduced its newest cloud-connected phone and tablet, as well as a media player called Nexus Q. The player works with the devices, the Internet and the Google cloud.

Remarkably fast, a multibillion-dollar industry is moving away from personal computers made mostly with Microsoft Windows software and Intel semiconductor chips. The combined revenue from these largely so-called Wintel desktops and laptops last year was about $70 billion at and . But these companies played virtually no part in the June shows from Apple, Microsoft and Google.

Asked what part it hoped to play in the cloud-dominated future, Dell declined to comment. An H.P. spokesman said in a statement that his company had computer servers and software in “eight of 10 of the world’s most trafficked sites, four out of five of the world’s largest search engines, the three most popular social media properties in the U.S.” He said nothing about PCs.

The tech future also poses challenges for Intel, which has been diversifying. Its chips are now in Apple computers and a host of other devices. Intel still has a significant place in the market, but often with lower-margin chips, and increased competition. Another chip company, Nvidia, got a shout from Google’s stage.

We are seeing a new business ecosystem with all sorts of mobile and cloud-connected devices. Each is a powerful computer, with connections to a nearly infinite amount of data storage and processing in the cloud.

“We’re entering this era where consumer electronics is the hardware, and the software and the cloud,” said Matt Hershenson, Google’s hardware director. His view increasingly holds for business computing, too.

Coincidentally, Friday was the fifth anniversary of the iPhone’s introduction. Next week, cloud-based software applications for the iPhone from outside developers will have their fourth anniversary. And, already, cloud devices that Google called experimental last year are now almost mainstream.

People now use their iPhones and tablets in their jobs. More than five million businesses write documents and swap spreadsheets in Google’s cloud-based applications. Microsoft, with arguably the most at risk in this transition, has 273 business and finance applications for sale in its cloud store, Azure Marketplace.

In the new ecosystem, many rules are still being worked out. Amazon, with its Kindle tablet and a successful online computing cloud and software store, may yet be a significant player. So may Barnes & Noble, which has a decent tablet and apps in the Nook reader but lacks a big cloud data center.

A few things are already clear. Power now centers on controlling millions of computers tied together in the cloud, with a complementary marketplace where people can find, sell and manage applications. Few physical stores sell software anymore, but sales channels still matter. Even the iPhone did not really take off until it had apps, sold through Apple’s store.

Those apps were written mostly by outside software developers. Developers have been important to the industry for decades. If you keep thousands of them happy with decent software-making tools and a big potential audience, as Microsoft learned, they will build products that make you essential. When the PC came along, these were games like Flight Simulator and productivity software like Lotus; now we have Angry Birds and modifications of Google Apps.

In the Wintel world, new versions of Microsoft Windows came out every few years, with major software projects tied to desktops and laptops. By contrast, in less than five years Apple has announced six versions of its mobile operating system. Google’s operating system for cloud-connected laptops, called Chrome, is updated every six weeks. The June meetings were intended to get developers working on consumer products that would be out by Christmas.

“Urgency has a whole new meaning now; you can’t slip,” said Andy Peterson, a senior software engineer at L4 Mobile, which makes mobile applications for companies like Sony and MTV. He was one of 5,500 developers at Google’s I/O conference last week. “I started at the company last September,” he said, “and I’m on my fourth application.”

Still, he says, the pace and the ability to get a creation into so many hands is exciting.

Dell and H.P. might not be joyful, but should they be glum? With so many devices, the consistent experience may be guided by centrally managed cloud software, but hardware is where the experience lives. That is why Steve Jobs was so long adamant that Apple control both hardware and software, and why even now Apple is picky about which independently produced apps are allowed in its store.

Microsoft apparently showed off the Surface without much notice to longtime hardware partners but could now bring them in to build it. Google’s strongest outside relationship with a hardware maker seems to be with Samsung. Google’s new tablet was made by Asustek of Taiwan.

Google says it is open to working with the incumbents â€" but these companies have to completely reimagine themselves, centering on using their esoteric knowledge of how business uses technology, rather than how to make a cheaper PC.

“What H.P. and Dell can do is understand the needs of the enterprise,” said Sundar Pichai, senior vice president for Chrome at Google. “They can say, ‘Here is our tablet, we have phones, here is how it will work across your company.’ We don’t have a sales force that can do that.”

That may mean giving up on the consumer market, more or less. But it beats being a relic of the old world.

iOS feature wish list - The Verge

Posted by on June 29, 2012 03:14 pm

O.K., I normally don't post in the forums, but I wanted to post my wishlist for iOS, what I want to see and stuff.

-The ability to change the default apps, and delete stock apps.

This is a common feature requset, but the launch of Chrome for iOS has reinforced this for me. I love Chrome for iOS, the ui, pre-caching, and most importantly, syncing with desktop Chrome. I use syncing between Safari and Safari Mobile so much, I can't justify switching unless it can offer a similar experience on the mobile side of things. I can't justify it if Sparrow will open links into Safari with no way to get them over to Chrome besides copying the link. Also, e-mailing from Safari always goes to the default app, not Sparrow, which is my e-mail app for iOS. If we could just choose the default apps for browser, photos, email, youtube, keyboard, and weather, it would make things so much nicer. Then, if we could delete default apps so we don't need a folder on the last page for apps we never use.

-A basic file system for better app-to-app communication.

Let's face it, it is not a very elegant solution for one app to have to specifically support apps like dropbox, send the file to the internet, and then bring the file back down to your device when they both are using the same storage. Each app could have their own seperate files that other apps can't access, like it is currently. Then, there could be a basic, universal one that apps can offer part of their content to certain types of apps. Using the dropbox example again, the app could have tags saying it is for this type of app (of course these tags would be made by Apple), and then Drobox would have a receiving tag that says it will recieve these kind of tags. Then, once set up, the app would automatically send all info with compatible tags to drobox.

-Fix the issues with Notification center not fitting in with the rest of the transitions in iOS.

After I read this from a site (can't remember where though), it bugs me every time I use Notification Center. Every os transition is about sliding objects, revealing things behind it. The multitasking tray slides up, revealing the apps behind it. The folders split, revealing the apps in the folder behind it. What does the Notification Center do, it slides ON TOP OF your current screen. Why does it depart from the rest of the ui? What it should do is provide the current "handle" as you slide down, pulling the current screen down, revealing the notification center behind the screen. I don't know why it bothers me so much, but it does. It is one of those things that I can't unsee (sorry for all those that read this and are like me, and now are annoyed by it).

-Add widgets to Notification Center.

If they ever implement widgets, they should NOT do it on the springboard. The home screen is about opening apps, widgets are about seeing information. When I go to the homescreen, I already know what I am going to go to next. I don't need to see info about something that I will not open, or am already going to open since I am already headed there. It makes more sense to put it in Notification center, which is focused on feeding info to you. If they had seperate pages for notifications and widgets, I don't care. Because Notification center is available everywhere, you can see that info everywhere, rather then seeing it on the home screen in the few seconds that you are there. I know some people will counter this logic by saying "coming from the lockscreen, you need to be able to see all the info in a second". This point is moot, since the lockscreen has all your notifications, so why would you need widgets after seeing all your notifications.

-Add functionality to the Music app.

I recently discoverd some annoyances with the music app. I find it irratating of how little functionality the quick access music controls are on the lock screen. First, why can't the music controls always be there when music is playing? Why do I have to double click the home button to get these features. Second, why can't they put shuffle and repeat toggles there, even if it is revealed by a double click, I would be happy. It is stupid that it shows album art and controls, just to shuffle around a tiny bit when unlocked. If the repeat and shuffle toggles flanked the album and song name, it wouldn't clutter things too much.

Next, I have a playlist that consists of all the songs I have from three bands, OneRepublic, Death Cab For Cutie, and Coldplay. I have them grouped by artist, which then groups each artist by album. I find it frustrating that there is no tracker on the side, which is normally letters because in "songs" it is in Alphabetical order. Because it is organized by album, it would help a lot to find songs by having some sort of thing on the side. I realize this is farfetched because of the amount of different songs some people have, but it would help a lot for having some kind of slider on the side (just wishful thinking).

I think that is all the features I am wishing for right now on my iPod Touch. I hope that at least some of these could be implemented.

Hands on with Nintendo's Wii U, coming this holiday season - CNN

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Nintendo's Wii U is a next-generation gaming console that comes with a large touchscreen controller that gives the bearer special powers and adds a new layer to the game.

The Wii U won't be released until later this year, but CNNMoney tried it out during a demo with Nintendo in New York City this week.

The Wii U console itself looks almost exactly like the original Wii. The difference lies in the special wireless GamePad controller, which features a 6.2-inch touchscreen that works differently with each game. It also adapts for multi-player gaming.

Nintendo hasn't yet set the Wii U's price tag and exact release date, but a representative said it's expected to launch in time for the holiday season.

Multi-player vs. single-player: With multi-player games the GamePad holder sees different things on the touchscreen than what their fellow gamers, who have regular controllers, see on the linked-up TV.

In a chasing game that I tried, players with regular controllers team up and try to catch the gamer with the touchscreen. The regular players simply see their avatars running around on the TV -- but the GamePad holder sees an overhead map on the touchscreen, which shows where everyone else is running.

In its single-player mode, the GamePad can add some special features or interact with what's happening on the TV.

In one archery game I tested, enemies "jumped" off the screen and onto the GamePad controller if they weren't defeated quickly enough, giving the player a second chance to grab 'em.

One first-person shooter game had me use the GamePad to grab items. Players could also move the controller around the room to check out a special map.

Games and media: Nintendo released a partial list of upcoming Wii U games, though as always, titles and launch dates are subject to change.

For now, the planned slate includes a few Mario titles, a Wii Fit exercise game and Pikmin 3. Third-party developers like Electronic Arts (EA), Sega, and Ubisoft will also sell Wii U games, including titles from the "Mass Effect" and "Assassin's Creed" franchises.

In addition to games, Nintendo says the Wii U will offer some social networking features, as well as streaming media apps from Netflix (NFLX), Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500), YouTube and Hulu. The GamePad will add a special feature to these, too.

As a Nintendo rep explained: Let's say a teenager is using the Wii U to watch a movie on Netflix, on a regular TV screen. Mom comes home and wants to watch something else. The teen can simply switch to the GamePad controller and continue watching, uninterrupted, while Mom puts something different on the TV.

Pricing: The Wii U's price tag is still a big question mark. Its predecessor -- which didn't have a fancy GamePad controller that is obviously costing Nintendo extra to include -- launched in 2006 at $250.

Nintendo knows it needs to get the pricing right. Its handheld 3DS system went on sale for $250 in March 2011, and its day-one sales beat records. But sales slumped over the next several weeks, and the company was forced to slash the 3DS price to $170.

Meanwhile, Nintendo shows no signs of changing its stance on mobile and social gaming. Company executives insist they're still not interested, even though the casual game market has exploded on platforms like Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) iPhone and other smartphones, as well as on Facebook (FB). 

Va. storm knocks out servers for 3 sites - USA TODAY

NEW YORK (AP) â€" Netflix, Instagram and Pinterest are using Twitter and Facebook to update subscribers after violent storms across the eastern U.S. caused server outages for hours.

• 

  Alex Wong, Getty Images

  A crew removes downed trees in Falls Church, Va., after a powerful overnight storm in the Washington, DC region.

Alex Wong, Getty Images

A crew removes downed trees in Falls Church, Va., after a powerful overnight storm in the Washington, DC region.

Netflix and Pinterest restored service by Saturday afternoon.

Instagram used its Facebook fan page to communicate with users of its photo-sharing service. It posted a message on Saturday morning that blamed the electrical storm for the outage and explained that its engineers were working to restore service.

Still, many Instagram users were searching for answers. "Instagram" was the top search term on Google on Saturday, according to Google Trends.

Netflix, Pinterest and Instagram are customers of Amazon's web services division. The unit provides web services and data storage facilities that are commonly used for "cloud computing".

Amazon spokeswoman Kay Kinton told The Associated Press in an email that the storm cut power to some of company's operations. Service has been restored for most customers, Kinton said.

Netflix, a video streaming service, said on Twitter that subscribers should reconnect if they still experienced problems.

The online scrapbook service Pinterest says employees are working to fix remaining issues that may affect performance.

The Friday evening storms are responsible for twelve deaths and knocked out power for millions of people.

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(Real) Storm Crushes Amazon Cloud, Knocks out Netflix, Pinterest, Instagram - Wired News

A storm in Virginia ruined Friday night movie-watching in California. Welcome to the Cloud. (Photo: Flickr/Mike Miley

Can Amazon handle its fast-growing cloud?

Hurricane-like storms knocked an Amazon data center in Ashburn, Virginia, offline last night, and a chunk of the Internet felt it. The six-hour incident temporarily cut off a number of popular internet services, including Netflix, Pinterest, Heroku, and Instagram.

The outage was the second for this particular Amazon data center in the past month. It’s bad news for a cloud computing platform that’s sold as a more reliable alternative to traditional data centers.

In theory, big outages like this aren’t supposed to happen. Amazon is supposed to keep the data centers up and running â€" something it’s has become very good at â€" and customers like Netflix, freed from that drudgery, are supposed to be free to cook up compelling new web application like video streaming.

In reality, though, Amazon data centers have outages all the time. In fact, Amazon tells its customers to plan for this to happen, and to be ready to roll over to a new data center whenever there’s an outage.

That’s what was supposed to happen at Netflix Friday night. But it didn’t work out that way. According to Twitter messages from Netflix Director of Cloud Architecture Adrian Cockcroft and Instagram Engineer Rick Branson, it looks like an Amazon Elastic Load Balancing service, designed to spread Netflix’s processing loads across data centers, failed during the outage. Without that ELB service working properly, the Netflix and Pintrest services hosted by Amazon crashed.

Friday’s outage wasn’t nearly as severe as the one that took out Amazon in April 2011. Then, a botched network update rolled across several data centers, causing widespread outages on the Amazon cloud.

“We lost a much bigger proportion of just one [Amazon data center] than the last power outage, and the ELBs didn’t route around it,” said Netflix’s Cockroft, via Twitter.

So on Saturday, there are two big questions that need to be answered. First, why did Amazon’s Ashburn data center fail? A storm shouldn’t have taken out Amazon’s backup generators. Second, Why were companies like Netflix so drastically affected by a single data center outage?

So far, Amazon isn’t saying a lot. “Severe thunderstorms caused us to lose primary and backup generator power to an Availability Zone in our east region overnight,” said Amazon spokeswoman Tera Randall on Saturday morning. “We have restored service to most of our impacted customers and continue to work to restore service for our remaining impacted customers.”

The powerful storms cut power to nearly a million customers, said Dominion Virginia Power. Storm winds hit 80 miles per hour, and killed at least six people in Virginia, according to reports.

At Netflix, services were offline for about three hours â€" between 8 pm and 11 pm pacific â€" according to company spokesman Joris Evers. “We’re actively working to analyze the cause and understand what happened,” he said Saturday.

Netflix doesn’t use Amazon to actually stream its video, so customers who were in the middle of watching movies wouldn’t have been interrupted. But Amazon powers virtually all of the back end services on Netflix.com, so the outage made connecting and starting up new movies impossible for customers.

The full explanation of what actually went wrong is sure to be complex.

When asked via Twitter if he blamed Amazon or should have been better prepared for this outage, Instagram’s Branson said, “lol go troll someone else. I work for a living.”

Amazon is promising to tell more about what exactly happened in the week ahead, and so is Netflix. Cloud-watchers are waiting.

Will Google Glass Help Us Remember Too Well? - SlashGear

When Google sent BASE jumpers hurtling from a blimp as part of the first day Google I/O Keynote presentation, I was barely impressed. The jumpers were demonstrating the Project Glass wearable computer that Google is developing, and which I and just about all of my friends are lusting over. I had seen plenty of skydivers jumping with wearable cameras strapped to them. Then the Googlers landed, and another team started riding BMX bikes on the roof of the Moscone center, where the conference is being held. Yawn. Finally, climbers rappelled down the side of the building. Ho-hum. The point seemed to be that Google Glass was real, and that the glasses would not fall off your face as you fell onto San Francisco from a zeppelin. But then Google showed something that blew my mind.

It was a simple statement. Something to the effect of ‘Don’t you hate it when you see something cute that your kids are doing and you say to yourself: I wish I had a camera.’ Sounds innocuous enough, but that one phrase changed everything, and it may shape more than the future of computing. It may shape memory as we know it.

Until now, I had imagined Project Glass as a sort of wearable cell phone. Where phones have fallen short of delivering a great augmented reality experience, a head-mounted display with a translucent screen might fare much better. Augmented reality improves navigation, local search, and even social functions almost exponentially. Project Glass seems like the first product in a broad future of wearable computing products.

But even as I have drooled over Glass in the past, it never truly occurred to me that Google might mean for Project Glass to record everything. EVERYTHING. Your entire life. Before we think about the implications, let’s discuss why this is completely possible.

How much data would it take to record a life? That depends on a lot of variables. Are you recording in 1080p? 4K? What audio bitrate? Audio and video, or location data, too? Do you record the moments when you are watching your own recordings? When you’re driving on your commute? Watching a movie or TV?

Let me offer a ballpark figure. 4.5 Petabytes. That’s my educated guess for the storage it would take to record every waking moment of my life. Forty-five Terabytes a year for 80 years. That’s based on a ‘high-profile’ video recording rate of 15 Mbps, and 6 hours of sleep every night.

Is that an insane amount of storage for anyone to possess? Not for long. I have on the tip of my finger right now a tiny microSD card with a 64GB capacity. Yesterday, this card did not exist, and a 32GB card would have cost a couple hundred dollars. Today, a 32GB card can be had for about $1 per Gigabyte. Tomorrow, we’ll have 128GB cards, and I believe the microSDXC standard tops out at 2TB or more. Within 10 years, I would bet that a Petabyte of storage, which is a million Gigabytes, will be completely affordable, either in a compact form or via a remote (cloud) storage host.

So, by the time my 3 year old is in High School, he’ll have access to the technology to record his entire life. I cannot begin to fathom the perspective he would have. It would change everything.

"When we can review a video of every memory, will that destroy nostalgia?"

Of course there are privacy concerns, and legal issues. But what has me curious at the moment are the ways such technology will shape nostalgia. I love nostalgia. I’m a big fan. Nostalgia is one of the most fun games we can play with our own lives. When we can reference a first-person video of every memory we have, will that destroy the value of nostalgia? Will the term become meaningless?

Think of your earliest memory. In your mind, how do you see yourself? Do you see your arms and hands reaching out in front of you? Or do you imagine yourself fully formed, in the third person? It’s a strange phenomenon that we remember ourselves from outside our own bodies. But technology like Project Glass may change the way we approach even our own memory storage. Is there a biological imperative, a psychological reason why we imagine ourselves this way? Is the disconnect necessary? I don’t know. But if I’m forced to imagine myself only in the first person, I know it will change the way I remember my entire life.

I’ve also heard the question raised of whether we will continue to remember at all. Certainly memory is an evolutionary trait. We are not likely to cease all memory function in a few decades simply because a technology helps us record everything we see and hear. But memory is also a learned skill. We learn to categorize and associate our memories. We learn what is useful for long-term storage, and what is best forgotten. Our mind has defense mechanisms in place to protect us from painful memories, and emotional triggers to spotlight and gild our best moments. What happens when we reduce all of these moments to a high-definition video played back on a computer screen?

One of my favorite moments from my youth is the night I met my first long-term girlfriend. We were at a party, but outside on the street, sitting on the spoiler of my car. It had just started to rain, and we were covering ourselves with a small foam floor mat that my father used in the aerobics classes he took. We talked for a few hours and really hit it off. I don’t remember anything we said, but I remember that my friends inside were impressed that I had done so well.

I hope that I will always have in my mind the feelings associated with that night. But if I played back the conversation, I’m sure it would destroy the memory. It was drivel, and melodramatic high school prattling, and the most obvious flirting nonsense. Outside of my own head, it would be embarrassing and cringe-inducing. It would be evidence against me.

Isn’t that adolescence in a nutshell? And early adulthood? And, well, all of life? Life is embarrassing. That’s why embarrassment makes us laugh so hard, because we can relate. We’re all horrible actors on our own stage. While I love the idea of Project Glass, and I can certainly see the advantage of having a camera recording all of those lost moments, there are too many moments that should stay lost. I would rather have them rattling around in my head than on my TV screen. I’d rather see myself from the outside, or remember the event from deep within, than have an accurate depiction of what my arms were doing, and how I sounded as the words spilled out of my gullet. I hope we don’t lose the ability to get it wrong, somehow, because memory is so much more interesting when it’s imperfect.

Stupid things you do with a smartphone -- and how to fix them - msnbc.com

3 hrs.

Adam Dachis , Lifehacker

Your smartphone can be your second brain, but it can also turn you into a person with no sense of direction, poor social skills and next to no privacy. Fixing these problems is easy, but first you need to know about them. Here are all stupid things you're doing with your smartphone.

Stupid Thing #1: You're overreliant on your smartphone, causing you to forget important numbers and directions
A lot of people think your smartphone is making you stupid. That's not true, but you may occasionally rely on it to a fault â€" or at least to the detriment of self-sufficiency. Rely too much on turn-by-turn GPS and you'll never learn how to get anywhere yourself. You probably can't recall more than a few of your contacts' phone numbers, which is fine until your phone's dead and it's an emergency. While you can't be expected to recall every little bit of data that crosses your path, you can benefit a lot by storing certain things directly in your gray matter. If you want to use your smartphone intelligently, it needs to be a supplement â€" not a replacement â€" for the tasks you should be able to complete on your own.

To fix this problem, it may be time to reprogram your memory. You're not used to retaining information your smartphone can provide, so you have to start taking the time to remember the information you request. When you receive driving directions, look through them a few times, repeat them aloud and remember them as you make your trip. You can always reference them again at a stoplight if you forget a turn or two, but making the effort to remember is the important thing. This way you'll be able to make the same trip again without the need to look up directions at all. After enough trips in the same city, you'll just know where you are without the aid of your phone.

When it comes to your to-do lists and phone numbers, don't just store them in your phone. Write them down on paper, with an actual writing implement. The act of writing can actually improve your ability to learn, so you'll get more out of the process. On top of that, look at phone numbers before you dial them and say them as you dial to help you remember them. An easy fix is simply replacing your favorite contacts' names with their numbers. Thoroughly look at your to-do list at the top of each day so you know what you need to get done, rather than just referencing the list whenever you need a new task. Having your tasks in your memory will help make you more productive because you'll be able to plan what you want to do and when quite a bit better. There's nothing wrong with having this information in your phone, but a good chunk of it ought to be in your brain as well.

Stupid Thing #2: You won't pay $1 for a great app
There are a ton of great, free apps for smartphones, but sometimes there's a better app for a small price â€" a price many won't pay. Take Sparrow for example. You get a free mail client with your iPhone, and it's not half bad. Sparrow, on the other hand, is amazing â€" especially if you're a Gmail user. It's currently priced at $2, and that's a barrier to entry for many people in spite of high praise from friends and people all over the web. When Apple started their app store, and Google followed with theirs, we entered a world where software became very inexpensive. It's not unusual to want to avoid paying for it because we know there are so many great options available for free. But sometimes, it's worth it.

Look at it this way: sometimes you'll pay $15 for a meal you could make yourself for $5. You do this because the $15 meal is going to taste better and you won't have to spend time making it. The same goes for apps: sometimes you should spend a few dollars to get something awesome that will save you time and effort â€" or that's just really fun. If you're concerned about overspending, set a monthly app budget. Not only will you have a better, more functional smartphone, but you'll be supporting the developers who work hard to bring you great things. It's a win-win.

Stupid Thing #3: Your phone notifies you about everything
Your phone's notification system is like a dog trainer and you are, unfortunately, the dog. When you're notified all the time, you become accustomed to constantly pulling out your phone to see what just happened. It's gotten so bad for some people that people feel their phone vibrating when it's not. If you've ever checked your phone because you thought it vibrated but it turned out nothing happened at all, you've probably enabled too many notifications.

I've set my phone to silent most of the time and simply check it periodically to see if there's anything new I need to know about. This works well for me. I've yet to miss anything urgent. That said, it's not a solution for everybody. Chances are you either need notifications as they happen for work, or you simply prefer to be more up-to-date. In that case, you just need to prune your notifications so you receive the stuff you consider important and ignore the stuff you can look at later. For the most part, this means editing each app's notification settings and keeping them on if they're important, turn off vibration if they're unimportant, and turn them off if they're useless. This will minimize your daily distractions and help you avoid checking your phone every second of the day.

Stupid Thing #4: You're distracted by your smartphone while driving
Texting while driving is more dangerous than driving drunk. You've no doubt heard that before, and you probably still send text messages from your car â€" or at least check out that last notification â€" while it's rolling down the road. Chances are you know this is bad, but the desire to send that text overrides your better judgment in the moment. While you'd most likely be better off not using your smartphone at all, it is possible to drive safely while using your phone â€" at least in small ways. The key is to keep your eyes â€" and your focus â€" on the road.

Realistically, you're always going to have distractions in the car that are going to hurt your focus. Keeping those distractions to a minimum will help you drive more safely. This means using voice control to change a song or send a text message while operating a moving vehicle, and both iOS and Android have comprehensive voice control features. If you're on an older iPhone without Siri, Vokul can bridge the gap. If you're an Android user who wants a personal assistant like Siri, you have plenty of options. Voice control is a much better way to control your smartphone without taking your eyes or your focus off the road, but it still qualifies as a distraction. Your best bet, if you just have to change that song or send a text message, is to do it at a stoplight. Because you're using voice control you'll be able to keep an eye on the light to know when it changes, but you won't need your full attention because the vehicle isn't moving. If you live by those rules, you'll have a lot less to worry about.

Stupid Thing #5: You don't monitor your privacy settings
Your smartphone retains a lot of personal data, and this points to two privacy issues. First, if your phone is stolen, the thief has easy access to your data. Second, apps on your phone may be tracking a little more information than you want. Both problems are very simple to fix.

To resolve the stolen phone problem, secure your smartphone with a password and enable remote wipe. This way no one can easily access your personal data, and you can destroy that data remotely if you've got something particularly sensitive.

To keep your phone from tracking you in unwanted ways, schedule a regular privacy audit once a month. (You should do this on the web and on your computers, too, by the way.) This is easy (albeit a bit limited) on the iPhone, as you can just open the Settings app and tap Location Services to enable or disable app access. (In iOS 6, these settings will be in a new Privacy tab that will allow you to toggle various types of information an app can access.)

Managing your privacy on Android is a little more complicated, but you also have greater control. First, you'll want to make sure your phone isn't running Carrier IQâ€"a program that's capable of tracking and reporting a massive amount of data without your knowledge. Second, an app called Privacy Blocker can perform that privacy audit for you. It'll take a look at the apps installed on your Android and give you an overview of the data they're collecting. If an app is overreaching, delete it.

Stupid Thing #6: You neglect other people in favor of your smartphone
Social media may be intended to bring us together, but it's equally skilled at keeping us apart. When spending time with other people, you can't exactly interact with them when you're using your smartphone â€" it's that pesky multitasking myth. Your phone's a device intended to keep you connected to people you care about. When you're with them, it's best to put the smartphone away. Solving the problem is often that simple.

If you're easily distracted, however, turn off alerts and notifications. If other people you're with are constantly checking their phones, politely ask them to save it for later. Technology is awesome, but it's often addictive. It's always with you, unlike people. So separate your smartphone and your human time. It's a better way to stay connected.

---

There you have it. A few simple fixes and you're back to using your phone for good. 

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Google I/O giveaways: $5.5 million buys a lot of buzz - CNET

Google I/O attendees doing "the wave" while waiting for the product giveaway line to start moving.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman)

"It's Christmas in June," someone told me as we waited in the gadget line at the Google I/O conference on Wednesday. Every year at the conference, Google "gives" attendees hardware that runs Google software and services. This giveaway program isn't cheap for Google. But it is worth it.

Let's look at the numbers.

This year, the haul for attendees includes four pieces of Google hardware, with a total retail value of $1,176:

Google charges most attendees, its developers, $900 for a Google I/O ticket; academics get in for $300 and journalists (plus other invited guests, we presume) for free. If you're paying full price for your own ticket, the net retail bonus is under $200. For attendees whose tickets are paid for by their employers, though, it's much more. That may be one reason Google sold out its I/O tickets in 20 minutes.

It also partly explains the thousand-person deep line to pick up the gear at the conference that formed an hour before the giveaway booth opened up.

The benefit to Google of giving away this gear, of course, is that developers get excited by new toys they might not otherwise buy, or even be able to buy: The Nexus 7 and Nexus Q are brand-new products, back-ordered two weeks on Google's online store. Google's new products are also quite hackable, which makes them great toys for geeks; even the media streamer the Nexus Q has USB ports "to encourage general hackability," as was said during its launch announcement.

Google also opens up the giveaway program to the press. Getting the hardware out to writers is in keeping with Google's general policy of sowing its products to the widest possible audience and hoping good comes from it, in stark contrast to Apple, which doles out early review units of hardware products to writers it has either good relationships with (or perhaps compromising pictures of).

And the payoff, from both developers and press? Immeasurable. Google's most ardent developers now have early access to the company's latest hardware and software platforms, and hundreds of jaded journalists are experimenting with products they might not otherwise touch.

Google's monetary cost of providing this bounty is significant. You might think that the wholesale cost to Google of this hardware is much lower than the retail value, but these products, especially the new ones, can't make much money for the company. The new Nexus 7, Google says, is being sold "at cost."

Like the Kindle Fire, the Nexus 7 is a media consumption portal. It's a front-end to Google's renewed and revised Play content library. Google doesn't have to make money from Nexus 7 hardware sales for the product to drive revenues into Google.

The Q? The list price is way too high to sell well in retail, but that doesn't mean Google is selling it at a high margin. It's made in the USA, which Google admits costs more than building the device in China.

The Nexus phone is, literally, last year's model, just with the new build of the Android OS. This product might actually cost less than the list price. But the Chromebox, a low-end computer, is likely being sold for not much more than it costs to produce; the hardware is comparable to other low-margin, low-end computers from other vendors.

So let's say Google makes only a small retail profit on these four devices when it does sell them. Let's call it 15%. That puts Google's cost per giveaway at $1,000. With 5,500 attendees at the show, that's a $5.5 million expense in hardware. The $900 attendance fee doesn't really offset this; Google I/O is an expensive conference to produce even without the giveaways. Renting Moscone Center in San Francisco is a significant expense, and it can't be cheap to coordinate two days of never-done-before wingsuit dives from an airship hovering over the heart of San Francisco.

But a few million dollars for hardware is not much of a hit for a company sitting on just under $50 billion in cash and equivalents.

The goodwill and general knowledge about Google the program generates? Priceless.

Google Nexus 7 vs Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0: Which Tablet Will You Buy? - Mobile & Apps

The Google-branded tablet takes on Galaxy Tab 2 7.0(Photo: Google/Samsung)

Google has finally taken the wraps off its new tablet - the Asus-made Nexus 7. The new shiny device with a price tag of $199.99 has created a buzz in the tech industry and is anticipated to saturate the tablet market by throwing an open challenge to the entry-level tablets like Kindle Fires and Nooks.

However, Nexus 7 is not alone. Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, which was announced by the South Korean electronics giant at the Mobile World Congress held in February and was released in April, boasts of pretty decent specs and carries a price tag of $249.99 (8GB).

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, which runs on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and is one of the most affordable tablets in the world, was hot on the heels of Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook tablet. But the debut of Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean)-powered Nexus 7, which will be available in the US, the UK, Australia and Canada by mid-July, means Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 has a new rival to contend with.

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Both the tablets are bold, beautiful and packs impressive specs. So, given a choice, which of the two would you buy? A quick look at the comparison of specs below will perhaps help make the decision easier.

Display

The Google-branded, Asus-made Nexus 7 will pack a 7-inch backlit IPS LCD display with 1280 x 800 pixels resolution covered in "Scratch-resistant Corning glass."

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 sports the same 7-inch screen but comes with a PLS TFT LCD WSVGA display and TouchWiz UX user interface (UI), although with a lesser 1024 X 600 pixels of resolution.

Nexus 7 also has a pixel density of 216 PPI (pixels per inch), which is again higher than the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 (170 PPI).

An analysis by AnandTech revealed the Google Nexus 7, that the tablet was on par in terms of pixel density when compared to Apple iPad 2, ASUS Transformer Prime and the 11-inch MacBook Pro. However, it did not do as well against Apple's new iPad, the MacBook Pro with Retina Display and ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity.

Dimensions

Both the tablets boast of similar physical dimensions, although the Nexus 7 is slightly thicker. However, it is a lighter and more portable than 7-inch rivals such as Blackberry PlayBook and Kindle Fire.

Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 measures 193.7 x 122.4 x 10.5mm and weighs 344grams. In comparison, the Nexus 7 measures 198.5 x 120 x 10.45mm, but weighs slightly less - 340grams.

Operating System

The Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 runs on Android 4.0 operating system, whereas, the Nexus 7 will ship with the new Android 4.1 OS (Jelly Bean) pre-installed. The next generation OS will run with enhanced capabilities like offline voice typing, Google Now, improved and re-sized homescreen widgets and notifications, upgraded photo sharing app with the capabilities of NFC technology and the newly introduced Project Butter, which is Google's attempt to make the entire UI "fast, fluid and smooth." It will include triple buffering in the graphics pipeline, to ensure consistent frame rates with interface animations.

Both the tablets will come packed with the same 1GB RAM and Google has also announced that device manufacturers such as Samsung, HTC, and Sony will get the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean SDK in mid-July too. Which means that Samsung fans can expect Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 to be upgraded to the new Jelly Bean OS very soon.

Processor

The Nexus 7 is powered by the Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor, which has been clocked at 1.3GHz and has a support of 12-core graphics chip.

On the other hand, the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is powered by TI OMAP 4430 dual-core processor clocked at 1GHz.

Both chips - TI and Nvidia, offer good value for money and are powerful performers. However, according to industry observers, the latter has fewer battery issues.

Camera

On the camera front, Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 scores high on the comparison sheet, as the tablet packs a 3.15-megapixel rear-facing camera and an additional front-facing VGA shooter with features including geo-tagging and smile detection. Moreover, it can record video at 720p and 30 frames per second (fps).

The Google Nexus 7 is equipped with only a 1.2-megapixe front-facing camera that has been designed for video calling and 720p video capture. The Google tablet does not have a rear-facing camera.

Connectivity

The Nexus 7 is a non-3G tablet. However, it has Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth, NFC functionality, preinstalled Google Wallet app and 3.5mm headset jack.

On the other end, Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 offers Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, dual-band, Wi-Fi hotspot and Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP and HS. The tablet also supports 3G connectivity offering data speeds of up to HSDPA 21Mbps and HSUPA 5.76Mbps.

Storage

The Google Nexus 7 will be offered in two variants: 8GB and 16GB. Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is available in 8GB/16GB/32GB options. Also, the Samsung tablet has the advantage of an expandable memory storage option (up to 32GB), thanks to microSD card slot, which is lacking in Nexus 7.

Battery

The Nexus 7 will come loaded with Li-ion 4325mAh battery, which is expected to serve 8 hours video playback time and 30 hours of standby time.

On the other hand, the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is powered by a Li-Ion 4000mAh standard battery which, according to a CNET report of the tablet's battery test, could keep the device juiced up for a little over seven hours on normal video usage.

Google's Risky Business - InformationWeek

New Chromebook: A Visual Tour

(click image for larger view and for slideshow)

Google I/O 2012, the company's annual developer conference, offered a glimpse of the company's future and a reminder of the company's problems. None of Google's peers, allies, or competitors--Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla, or Samsung--have a vision for technology that is quite as ambitious or socially transformative. And neither do they strive to realize their respective visions in such an incautious way.

Google's demonstration of Project Glass, its augmented reality glasses, exemplifies its approach. In six weeks, the company conceived, coordinated, and executed an impressive stunt twice, flawlessly--skydivers wearing Project Glass prototypes jumped from an airship over San Francisco onto the roof of the Moscone West convention center while streaming video from their glasses to the conference.

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That's a lot of risk to call attention to a product that won't even be available in prototype form until next year, is of unproven value, and is sure to provoke privacy concerns. But then what would you expect from the company that pushed ahead with Street View despite the privacy controversies and scanned libraries full of books despite the copyright problems? Google doesn't play it safe.

[ Read Google I/O Day 2: Chrome Hits iOS, IaaS Play. ]

Project Glass could redirect the mobile computing revolution, or it could turn out to be Google's Ginger, a.k.a. the Segway Human Transporter, impressive engineering overshadowed by absurd hype. Ginger, Time suggested a decade ago, might be bigger than the Internet. Don't expect Project Glass to be that big.

At least Google is gambling. It made a credible foray into the hardware business with its Nexus 7 tablet and an iffier attempt to enter the consumer electronics market with its Nexus Q streaming media device. One of these will probably flop--the one priced at $299. But having acquired Motorola Mobility, Google can't back out of the hardware business now. Nor should it: With everyone emulating Apple's model--wedding hardware and software--Google faces a landscape of diminishing opportunities if it doesn't do the same.

As if to prove that point, Google launched Chrome for iOS, free of the primary things that make Chrome meaningful. Google says Chrome's core principles are speed and security, yet Chrome for iOS comes with neither.

Google itself admits that Chrome for iOS might run more slowly than Apple's mobile Safari browser. "Rendering and the Javascript engine are provided by iOS through UIWebView," Google explains on its website. "Because Chrome [for iOS] does not have access to Safari's Nitro engine, Chrome might have slower Javascript performance." The need to accept the restrictions in Apple's UIWebVIew API also affects the privacy afforded by Incognito mode in Chrome for iOS. Google uses an asterisk to refer to Chrome's browser privacy option, calling it Incognito* mode, to call attention to the API limitations that prevent it from handling HTML5 local storage as securely as the desktop version of Chrome.

Apple enforces its API restriction as a matter of security, a rule that, coincidentally, ensures that Safari's competition can't really compete. Being handicapped on another company's hardware explains why Google might want to get into the hardware business, whether it's ready or not.

Yet, Google appears to be learning from Apple about the value of an iron hand. Its Android Platform Developer Kit represents an attempt to get its hardware partners and carriers to march with more coordination. Of course, we've been here before: At Google I/O 2011, Google launched the Android Update Alliance to combat Android fragmentation. It didn't work. Perhaps the sequel will find an audience.

Android 4.1, known as Jelly Bean, offers further proof of Google's penchant for recklessness. One of Jelly Bean's primary features is Project Butter, a UI fix. A smooth, responsive UI is the sort of thing Apple would have made a priority. Google, having iterated as rapidly as possible to catch up with Apple, is now getting back to basics.

But Jelly Bean isn't just sanding Android's rough edges. Smart app updating, improved notifications, and Android Beam enhancements show innovation in Android is alive and well. Perhaps most impressive is Google Now, which represents a bold attempt to re-imagine search on a mobile device. It's search combined with just-in-time delivery: Google Now will do things like alert you to traffic conditions before you leave for work. If you've grown jaded after years of hearing about the coming of intelligent agents, pay attention to Google Now.

Google tried to encourage people to pay attention to Google+, which can now help organize events. But Google's "social spine" isn't nearly as interesting as its commitment to cloud computing.

Google's decision to enter the infrastructure-as-a-service business with Google Compute Engine might seem inevitable in retrospect, but it will still shake things up. Massive computational power on demand--that's what change is made of.

As Google continues its mission to organize the world's information, it's reorganizing the social, technical, and commercial landscape in the process.

New apps promise to inject social features across entire workflows, raising new problems for IT. In the new, all-digital Social Networking issue of InformationWeek, find out how companies are making social networking part of the way their employees work. Also in this issue: How to better manage your video data. (Free with registration.)