Hangouts 2.1

Hangouts has just received a big dot release update this week and though it is a step in the right direction it shows that there is still work to be done. The updates big new feature is unified conversations between Hangout messages and SMS. This is a big step in the right direction as it was one of the the biggest problems with the app since Google added SMS. Having one source for the conversation is great, and I hope they push it even further. The first most obvious step down this road would be to have Hangouts send the instant message to whoever it can rather than the SMS and switch to SMS when the message is not being sent to the other persons phone. I imagine that we will see something like this once Google is able to implement Voice into the Hangouts service, which of course is no small feat. The other benefit from integrating Voice into Hangouts would be that we could see the next big feature, receiving and sending SMS from the Hangouts interface on the computer, phone and tablet. This would be a great update to an already awesome service the Google has given us and as a side benefit could mean backing up SMS messages so that a new phone or new ROM would be able to start off where you left off in your conversations. I think these are viable updates and seem like they are on the roadmap based on comments that Google employees have made about the future of Google Voice and the ever awesome Android Police teardown of the 2.1 update that shows some Voice pieces starting to make their way into the app.

What this reminds me of and what I would want to see in the future is the inclusion of other messaging protocols into the app as well as with WebOS synergy. Due to the fragmentation of protocols this may not be possible anymore as most IM services are moving away from Jabber and other open protocols. The glimmer of hope may be the Hera project, it could make for more interoperability based on what the leaks and rumours have said. I think we should see quite a bit at I/O this year. Lets see what happens.

Resolution

A new year, a new attempt to work on my writing skills. There are numerous ways to improve upon your own skills with New Year resolutions, most people stick with the tried and true "get in shape" and fail after the first few weeks. This year I think I will attempt to write a couple hundred words a day, there will not be a set overarching topic to the writings though I would imagine them to reflect technology, the law or current events as they happen. I want to improve my writing processes over the course of the year and will hopefully be able to reflect on this post a year from now to see how my writing style has changed, preferably for the better. Everything that I write will be from my own perspective and reflect opinions only, they will not represent advice to others. This is a collection of my own personal reflections on information that I happen to come across. This will not be an overly formal venture, but I will try to keep it as well written as I can.

My current mobile setup includes a beautiful black Nexus 5, Nexus 7 (2012), Jawbone Up, and black Pebble Smartwatch. Each of these has worked themselves into my everyday life and I would be hard pressed to make drastic changes from this setup any time soon. The Pebble is the newest addition to my collection and it has already become something I do not want to go without. I am able to check notifications and control music without accessing my phone and it is wonderful. Many people think that the Pebble just adds another place to view notifications and is thus redundant, however I have found that allows for a greater degree of freedom from my cell phone, I can distance myself from the phone for greater periods and I have much lower anxiety about missing notifications or phone calls to my phone, it is great being able to do triage right from my wrist. I will have more thoughts on my devices coming up in the future however I just wanted to let it be known how much I already love having my Pebble, it just works brilliantly for me, and I can’t wait to see the improvements that come to the Pebble and smartwatches in the future.

Android Police APK Teardown shows awesome sync updates

Android Police have one feature that I love to check out and that is the APK Teardown feature. This week they got their hands on the Google Play Services APK and tore it down in 2 parts. Part one looks at the gaming portion of the APK and that includes tons of goodies that we may get to see at I/O, including game syncing and leader boards. Part two is the more interesting part in my opinion as it looks as though there is app syncing coming to Android. This could mean backups for your devices or syncing app data across devices which would both be welcome additions to the Android ecosystem. In addition the teardown reveals a location sync that could be great for battery life if it turns out to be what Android Police believe.

Google Services Sharing Data

In a blog post today Google announced today that the storage for GMail, Drive and Google+ (Photos) will be combined into one 15GB package instead of separate amounts for each service.

This is one more in a series of steps in integrating the services provided by Google. I haven't quite decided if it is a good move or a bad one yet as the change has both pros and cons. On one hand now you can increase the size of your GMail past the previous 25GB limit if you pay for extra storage as any additional storage is also shared by all three services. In addition it means that if you are using one and it is close to capacity you will gain extra space if you aren't using the others to their full extent. The downside is that now you have to pay attention to the amount of space your Google+ pictures take up which you didn't have to before and can be a problem if you use all three to their full capacity, though I suppose that was a problem they had before.

Unfortunately CNET's original report that they increased the size of Drive by 3 times is not 100% accurate. (Though there is a one line update at the bottom of the article acknowledging the mistake the title is still quite misleading)

But with I/O still to come who knows, maybe there will be an increase in storage right around the corner.

Google I/O WEDNESDAY!!!

I for one can't wait for this year's I/O. Here are a couple sites that will have a livestream of the event, and if you need some more sites try any tech site.

http://gigaom.com/2013/05/13/google-io-keynote-live-stream/


https://developers.google.com/events/io/

Chromium Blog: Building efficient apps and extensions with push messaging

Chromium Blog: Building efficient apps and extensions with push messaging:

'via Blog this'

Event pages keep apps and extensions efficient by allowing them to respond to a variety of events such as timers or navigation to a particular site, without having to remain running persistently. But what if you need to respond to something that occurs outside of Chrome, such as a news alert, a message sent to a user or a stock hitting a price threshold? Until now, you had to do this by repeatedly polling a server. This process consumed bandwidth and reduced the battery life of your users’ machines. For a more efficient solution, starting today you can use Google Cloud Messaging for Chrome (GCM) - across all channels of Chrome.

Hmm, looks like this could come in handy for Google Now updates, or some sort of messenger.....

Motorola X Phone?

Could we see the Motorola/Google X Phone at I/O next week???

Engadget is reporting that Motorola has filed documentation at the FCC for a phone with a designation of XT1058. The documentation shows LTE bands compatible with AT&T and NFC.

The image doesn't give much information about the phone however it does match what evleaks has posted on their twitter account recently. 

The camera and flash are in the same location in the evleaks picture and the FCC filing, as well as the slight curvature under what seems to be the headphone jack in the centre of the phone. Also visible in the drawing and the photo is the power button which starts at about the bottom of the camera lens and goes to about the flash. The only major difference between the two is the circle in the photograph on the left side of the device. The circle below the flash in the drawing may or may not be included on the device as there is a sticker covering that area of the device.

Additional pictures of the front of a black boxed device from evleaks shows a Motorola phone running on AT&T's network that is purported to be the X Phone. 

It looks like it could be something announced soon and seeing that Google I/O is coming next week there is a chance that we may see a brand new phone coming from the team. 

I hope that this is announced next week purely to rub it in to all the blogs that were reporting that it was delayed. In my opinion something cannot be delayed before there has been an announcement of it in any capacity. Reporting that a device or software will be delayed before it has been acknowledged to exist is just crazy talk. 

And to end this post is the picture that claims to be the X Phone in the buff. 

An iPhone Lover’s Take On The Nexus 4 | TechCrunch

An iPhone Lover’s Take On The Nexus 4 | TechCrunch:

'via Blog this'

Android Central looks at the HTC One Ultrapixel camera vs the GS4:

On the whole, though, the Galaxy S4 produced the better-looking images in our testing, despite its comparative weakness in low light shots. The HTC One's camera is by no means bad, but its performance is clearly weighted towards indoor and low-light photography at the expense of daylight performance. The opposite is true of the Galaxy S4, which excelled in daylight photography, and is backed up by an excellent HDR mode.

Talk/Messenger/Voice/SMS/Babel/Hangouts

According to the rumour mill Google is working on a new messaging app, there are tons of rumours flying around about it so lets see what we may have here.

 First off yes this is a problem that Google needs to solve. There are way too many chat programs that involve Google products that work in different ways. There is Google Talk which has been around for ages and right now works in Gmail, Android and many other mobile platforms, and the desktop web chat client for Google+, then they have the Messenger application that runs on iOS and Android in conjunction with the Google+ app, they have Google Hangouts through Google+, there is a chat client within Google Drive, then there is Google Voice which works on the web and on mobile and then there is the standard SMS/MMS app on Android. This is a mess.

In an ideal world there would be one application that could be used on phones, tablets and computers that allow for seamless communication and notification across devices.  This is where the rumoured 'Babel' app comes in. The internet has been abuzz with leaks and information about the service with even some possible screenshots a couple weeks ago.

In my opinion it looks like the chat window that pops up when you use Google+ on the web. It also looks like it would be easily transferrable to a mobile environment. I like how clean it is and absolutely love the card based interface that has been going on with Google design.

The rumour is that at launch everything will be rolled up into one application except for Voice and SMS/MMS. This is a big win for Google, having everything rolled up and working together, I wish they had been able to roll SMS/MMS into the application at launch and of course with no official announcement yet it could still be included. This would be an important addition in order to compete with both iMessage and WhatsApp and would make using it that much easier.

Another feature I would like to see from it is taken directly from BBM and that is read receipts. I don't really know what difference they would make but I do like the idea of it. I also like the idea of integrating service that I use with all of the Google Apps that I use.

Interestingly enough a commenter in The Verge forums may have given the best information we have about the new service. In the forum he states that the service would be called Hangouts, and will not include SMS and have a full Holo design. These are pretty safe bets in general but for the non-believers out there this specific commenter also gave accurate information about the launch of the Nexus 4 and 10 in the fall leading to some credibility behind the story.

I truly can't wait for this to be announced at I/O in a week and hope it catches on to beat out the many many competitors that are out there. I have a big hope that there will be some way for it to work on all of the major platforms as I still have friends that use Blackberry or Windows Phone and if I could use it with them it would be a very big deal.

Once again I cannot wait for I/O to see what surprises Google has in store for us, and it still makes me wish that I had friends inside Google that would let me play with things before they were announced.