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BetaNews.Com (4 non lus)

Google+ celebrates 1st birthday with Events and History

Publié: juin 28, 2012, 10:57pm CEST par Wayne Williams

One year ago today, Google moved onto Facebook's turf and stunned techdom in the process. How much has changed? Google+ now has a total of 250 million users. Of that figure, Google says 150 million people use the service at least monthly, and 50 percent of those active users do so daily. That doesn’t actually mean 75 million people go to Google+ every day though -- it just means that they have some sort of interaction with Google’s social features, or more likely, click +1 buttons.

Despite its reasonably impressive growth, Google+ still lags a long, long way behind Facebook, which has over 900 million users. Google knows it’s got its work cut out to persuade ordinary Facebook users to give Plus a try. Especially, as in most cases, their friends won’t be using it. To help encourage sampling and indeed regular usage, Google has consistently added more and more features to its site, and beefing up its mobile offerings. At Google I/O it announced a new app for Android smartphones with new profiles, a ribbon bar, and new notifications, as well as native tablet apps for both Android and iPad designed specifically for the larger screen sizes. The Android version is already available, with the iPad edition coming "soon".

Google+ Events

At Google I/O the company also introduced a brand new feature called Events, which basically offers integration with Google Calendar, allowing you to send invites to upcoming occasions, manage attendance, share photos and more.

Using the new feature is very straightforward. Just give your event a title, set the date and time, add an optional location, then fill in the details and invite some people. You can invite anyone, they don’t need to be Google+ users, although any who are, will have access to additional features, like live photo sharing.

You can change the theme of the invitations to suit the type of occasion. Clicking the left and right arrows, will let you move through 28 "cinemagraphic" themes (subtly animated images), or you can click the Change Theme button and select some of the featured choices, choose some stationary, or add one of your own photos. You can pick an image available on Google+ or Picasa, or upload something from your computer.

People who receive an invite will be able to confirm whether they’ll be coming or not, and will be given the option of checking their availability on Google Calendar before committing themselves. If your friends don’t check into Google+ very often, it doesn’t matter as events are automatically added to Google Calendar as well.

Upcoming occasions are all accessed through the new Events section and selecting something will show you who’s attending, and any comments they’ve made about it.

Best of all, people will be able to add photos, before, during or after the event, by linking or uploading them, or using the Google+ app on their phones. All of the photos will appear under the Event information, and if your friends have enabled the instant upload feature on the Google+ app (Party Mode), the photos will appear as they are snapped. Which is very, very cool, and could be a major draw.

Google+ History

Another new feature that’s being worked on is Google+ History. The API (currently available as an early preview will allow developers to add a few lines of code to their website or app that will privately save a user’s actions in his or her Google+ History. For example, if someone listens to a song in a media player, that information will be saved, but not shared on the social network. If the user wants to share it, they’ll be able to do so, but it won’t be public by default. Although it’s very early days, this could have some great uses, such as allowing users to republish some, but not all of their tweets, for example.

As with all previous updates, it’s unlikely these new features will persuade huge numbers of Facebook users to migrate over, but I can see the Party Mode in particular, proving very popular.

What’s your opinion on Google+? Do you currently use it? Do you plan to use it? And what do you think of the new features?
Meet Google Nexus 7, Kindle Killer

Publié: juin 28, 2012, 5:04am CEST par Joe Wilcox
I told you so, in April. Contrary to pundits at the time viewing Google's tablet as an iPad competitor, I saw something else: Google isn't gunning for Apple but Amazon. After getting my hands on the tablet this evening, and comparing the experience using my wife's Kindle Fire, there is no doubt. Google will probably save Android from Amazon, but the end cost may be greater gains for iPad.

By just about every measure -- the exception being buying tens of thousands of retail goods -- using Nexus 7 feels like Kindle Fire, only better in every way. Significantly, the experience is different from using Google Nexus smartphones or other Android tablets. That's because Google Play is so visible. I can't say if that's a function of Android 4.1 Jellybean or how Google has set up the tablet. But content pushes to the forefront, like Kindle Fire, and much of it is similar.

Make no mistake, Nexus 7 is all about content consumption, much the same way as Amazon's tablet and also iPad. Google offers a curated stack that feels end to end. Like Kindle Fire, also iPad, users can read books and magazines, watch movies and TV shows and listen to music. Sure other Android tablets can do these same things, but it's how that matters -- all coming from a single cloud store. Also, the different sections, say for movies or newspapers, feel much like using Amazon's store. If I wasn't at Google I/O, and so home, I would take screenshots of my wife's Kindle Fire and show the similarities.

In the default setup, the main screens fill with Google Play content, one of these on separate screens: My Books/My Magazines, My Library, My Movies and My Music. Boundaries between device and content blur, and the approach is closer to Chromebook than any Android tablet. Nexus 7 is your life in a cloud device. Sure you access local content, but like Kindle Fire there is seamless integration with cloud content and device.

Let's compare to see how much Nexus 7 is meant to compete with Kindlfe Fire:
- They're about the same physical size with 7-inches displays.
- Resolution is roughly comparable 1280 x 800, but Nexus 7's IPS display looks better.
- Kindle Fire runs Android 2.3 and Google's tablet v4.1, and there is no comparison; Nexus 7 is smoother and lusher in every way.
- 8GB storage is same, at $199, but Google offers 16GB for $50 more.
- Nexus 7 has 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera; Kindle Fire none.
- Google's tablet has WiFi and Bluetooth; the latter is missing on Amazon's device.
- The newer Android has Tegra 3 quad-core processor (let's just not talk about the other).
- Amazon offers its own Silk browser, which uses a unique server-caching system; Google serves up Chrome.
Then there is the similar curated cloud content services and ways they feel alike.

In raw performance and fluidity, Nexus 7 is nothing like Kindle Fire, or any other Android tablet I've used. Actually, performance feels very much like Galaxy Nexus, which is another Google branded, co-designed device (this time with Samsung). Until today, Galaxy Nexus was by far the best Android device I've ever used. The responsiveness of the touchscreen and overall using apps is very similar, and that's with different operating systems. My Galaxy Nexus has Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich.

This is one smooth performer, and I'm baffled by how much better than my Transformer Pad 300, which Asus also makes. Actually, I'll sell the Transformer soon after returning home, and I bought it for the quad-core processor and stock Android. Nexus 7 is so much better.

But there's a problem. The user experience is so good -- and in ways oh-so like Galaxy Nexus -- I look at the two and wonder why have both of them. The 7-inch tablet doesn't feel that much larger than Galaxy Nexus' 4.65 display.

Something else: Google goes where neither Apple nor Amazon can. Google+ is a huge differentiator and topic too big for this post. But briefly -- the social network and the many Jellybean enhancements that respond to your behavior and habits. The device is primed for the two Google+ killer features, Hangouts and the new Events. As for Android 4.1, multiple features, including revamped Notifications and new voice response, make the OS more of a personal assistant -- and by demo much stronger than Apple's Siri. But that's all topic for another day.

In April I identified six things I expected Google's tablet to bear -- and they mostly related to killing Kindle Fire: Brand equity, $199 price, superior operating system, curated lifestyle apps, deep cloud service integration, and reference design for other Android licensees to follow. I see these all here. What I didn't anticipate: How closely Google imitates and exceeds the Kindle Fire curated apps, browser, operating system and services experiences.

Nexus 7 is available now for preorder from Google Play. There's good chance I'll replace my wife's Kindle Fire with one very soon, and she loves that device. According to my buying poll, 47 percent of you plan to buy Nexus 7 within the first month of release and another 18 percent in three months. Is that Kindle killing or what?

But is it enough to take out iPad? Not that I see. Nexus 7 success will prevent the Android tablet market from fracturing around specialized versions, like Amazon and Barnes & Noble offer. But the device is more likely to take away sales from these Android adaptations rather than from iPad. Six months from now? Who knows? If you think you do, please pontificate in comments.
Google Nexus 7: yet another cheap Android tablet (YACAT)

Publié: juin 28, 2012, 2:37am CEST par Randall C. Kennedy

The cat is finally out of the bag. After weeks of speculation surrounding Google’s vaporous "7-inch Kindle killer", the Nexus 7 is now real. And as I suspected, the search giant’s new reference platform is nothing more than another in a long line of cheap, uninspiring Android tablets.

I mean, what is there to differentiate the Nexus 7 from similarly-sized tablets by Samsung or Acer? They all have the same crappy build quality, the same limited output options (no HDMI?) and the same tinny, poorly-placed speakers that have come to define the 7-inch Android tablet category.

Sure, the Nexus 7 has quad cores. But when it comes to mobile CPUs, more isn’t necessarily better, something Apple so aptly demonstrated with the new iPad. In fact, a good argument could be made that Google was forced to go with quad cores in order to achieve decent frame rates under the increasingly bloated Android 4.xx OS platform.

And speaking of Jellybean, Google could have thrown us enterprise IT types a bone and offered some improvements in device manageability. As it stands, we haven’t had to deal with many post-Android 2.3 devices because every 3.xx and non-phone 4.xx device has flopped big time -- and because market fragmentation keeps the Android OS upgrade cycle creeping along at a glacial pace.

However, if (and it’s a big if) the Nexus 7 takes off, we’ll likely see a deluge of users wanting to bring these things to work with them. And that means the onus is on Google to start thinking about making the platform more manageable. Never mind that the Nexus 7 is targeted at the Amazon Prime crowd. BYOD virtually guarantees that we’ll end up having to support it at some point in the near future.

By the way, am I the only one to notice how the 7-inch form factor has now become the ideal for portable media consumption and gaming? Back when RIM first shipped the Playbook, the company was slammed for creating a tablet that was "too small" (i.e. smaller than the iPad). A year later and, not only is 7-inch an accepted form factor, it’s now the size of choice for Google’s reference platform. Even Apple is rumored to be working on a 7-incher.

Funny how quickly the conventional wisdom can change. What hasn’t changed, however, is the fact that the Android marketplace still can’t seem to deliver a tablet solution that IT can embrace. What we want is a robust device that is portable, has excellent build quality and emphasizes security and manageability over bleeding edge specs and questionable software engineering.

Sadly, none of the current crop of Android devices can deliver, including the Nexus 7. To find these qualities you have to look beyond Google’s frat party of an ecosystem to a solution that IT organizations can fully embrace. In other words, you have to buy a Playbook.
Autodesk cloud goes pretty much anywhere, even Chromebook [video]

Publié: juin 28, 2012, 12:03am CEST par Joe Wilcox

Perhaps my biggest surprise walking around Google I/O 2012: Autodesk, and a Chromebook! Cough, cough, gag, gag. What the hell is this? Why would Autodesk demo its big-iron 3D design products on the Samsung Series 5 550. This is not MacBook Pro with Retina Display.

As Randy Young explains it's all about the cloud and extending Autodesk customers' capabilities in the cloud. Let's say you're a builder. You've got AutoCAD and your client doesn't. They can view the design in Chrome. Sure enough, there's an AutoCAD WS plug-in available in the Chrome Webstore. Yes, apps for Android and iOS are available, too. But the developer is here promoting Autodesk 360 cloud service. The concept: Store and share design files in the cloud. If your customer is crazy enough to buy Chromebook. No problem.