Month: February 2014

You have seen our last comparison of Samsung Galaxy S5 with its Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3 now it’s time to compare it with the flagship of Sony, the Sony Xperia Z2 and also with the LG G2. The Samsung Galaxy S5 and the Sony Xperia Z2 are Water and Dust proof with IP67 and IP58 certifications respectively. Let us see what each device packs in them and how does each device stand after the comparison…

Android Advices

If you are using responsive layout for your blog or website, you should make the Facebook like box responsive. After using responsive layout for my Blog, there was everything responsive except the Facebook like box. Finally I have found a quick solution to make the Facebook like box responsive with a bit of CSS and a div to enclose the iFrame. The responsive Facebook like box will make your blog more beautiful on mobile devices. So here, I am going to share how to make your Facebook like box responsive…

TechClause

The music player is one of the most popular features of your Android phone. The application allows you to listen to your favorite songs when you are in the mood for some entertainment. Since Android is one of the most widespread mobile platforms, several music applications are now available in the Android market.

You can find these applications online very easily but it might prove difficult to select the best applications from among them. A list of the top ten Android music apps is given below…

Top Apps

So you know those old wives’ tales about tweaking your battery stats improving your battery life? Well apparently those old wives’ tales aren’t true. In fact— Google says you’re wasting your time by fiddling around with your battery stats or using battery tweaking apps. Google’s own Diane Hackborn recently addressed this common myth and urban legend of tweaking battery stats improving your battery life…

TalkAndroid.com

Just read this article on Google’s Project Tango which is a 3D Vision Chip embedded inside a phone. I’m pretty sure you have no idea what a 3D Vision Chip is because I had no clue what it was either.  As a simple explanation, it’s the same technology behind a XBox Kinect that allows you the Kinect to track and map the physical world to a digital world so you can be given points for your sweet moves in Dance Central.  And if you’re not an XBox fan, it’s the same technology they showed in Dark Knight where Batman could see the layout of a building through his mask or how they found the Joker because they mapped the entire city from cell phone signals.  It’s a really cool project and the fact that they’re jumping to embedding it inside a phone is really exciting because that could mean we’ll see an Android handset with one of these fancy 3D Vision Chips in the not so distant futures (but still distant because this would probably be super expensive).  And of course, there was talk about this and Google Glass and how if this was integrated into Glass, you could map an entire building simply by having someone walk around. I don’t know if this could realistically show things on the other side of a wall, it seems more realistic that it would just be able to map the physical items it can see and process, but who knows. I have no idea how you get your hands on something like this, but I would definitely be interested if they made this available to developers.  I really do need to spend more time working on mobile apps…

Everyone is talking about Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp for $19B and along with Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram for $1B, I really don’t see how these acquisitions help Facebook (and apparently I’m not alone according to financial analysts).  I don’t see these driving more usage on Facebook and I guess I don’t see how the added data you get form WhatsApp users being that valuable to Facebook, but who knows, maybe I’m missing something obvious.  Or maybe it’s simply a way to consolidate consumer tech companies and have more of our personal information consolidated across different platforms that most would think are separate (I bet there’s a lot of kids out there who use Instagram and bash Facebook without realizing that they’re still drinking from the Facebook teat).  I’ve used WhatsApp and it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t great either, the app didn’t always notify me when I got a message and I would sometimes have to open the app before I saw I got a message from hours ago. I found actual text messages to be far more convenient and efficient. So I’m not too sure what the huge draw of WhatsApp and how they got so many users around the world.  But in any case, good for them and congratulations to the 50 employees who I’m sure all became instant millionaires/billionaires.  Still waiting for my big pay day, but I’m thinking I’ll have better luck playing the lottery.

So it looks like Microsoft is making some serious waves in the CRM space as it fights with incumbents like Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Oracle. With the purchase of Parature (huge congrats to the Parature team for a great exit), Microsoft CRM is definitely expanding its feature set and functionality to really give the other guys a run for their money. It will be interesting to see how all the different pieces play together and if the sum of all their parts is enough for companies with existing systems to spend the time/money to convert to CRM or for small/medium companies who are growing and using spreadsheets or other free/cheap alternatives to upgrade to CRM instead of one of their competitors. As someone who worked with a lot of companies to implement a support solution, I can say the way to win the war is to make setup as simple as possible, possibly even providing tools that make converting from any system a piece of cake.  I can easily say that transferring everything from one system to another was possibly the most painful thing the team had to do.  And it’s not a value-add, it doesn’t make anyone’s life easier, it simply is the cost of converting.  And when you want companies to convert, you need to make transferring to your services as easy as possible (as well as providing an amazing product).  Anyways, I could talk about all the way that a CRM solution could be built to make it the best/easiest and most attractive solution out there, but realistically none of the big guys will listen to me, they have teams of product managers who know best, but I doubt many of them have had to work with 100+ companies to convert/implement/integrate CRM systems….

Kickstarter announced on their blog that their system was compromised and hackers were able to access personal information and encrypted passwords.  This definitely means that if you have a login on Kickstarter that you should go and update your password.  And if you use that same password on other sites with the same email address, you probably should go update those passwords too.  I just wrote about some ways to create unique passwords that are easy to remember, so you might want to check them out and implement you own system.

There was a lot of news recently about the most commonly used passwords of 2013 (which are “123456”, “password” and “12345678”).  If you’re familiar with dictionary attacks, you know that a computer can quickly figure out your password.  And if you’re like most people who use the same password across sites, having your password compromised on one site is extremely dangerous.  Now how can your mobile phone make this more secure and easier to use?

I saw some great news for a group of guys I met in SF last year who were trying to solve this exact problem and got bought by Google.  Their start-up was called SlickLogin and they were using mobile devices to provide two-factor authentication.  So even if your password does get compromised, if the hackers didn’t have access to your mobile phone, they wouldn’t be able to access your phone.  Let’s think of the following situation…

Let’s say you use your super secure password “password123456” on some new Instagram-like site, the site is some new site created by some 20 year-olds who aren’t being too secure with your password and store it in plain-text in a publicly accessible database and hackers are able to get in, download everyone’s email address and password.  These hackers then start using the email/passwords they stole at some of the major banking websites and are able to access your account.  They then get enough information to start opening up credit cards in your name and start a buying spree. So how do you keep your information secure and not create a million different passwords? There is really no easy answer to solve this problem. But the guys from SlickLogin say instead of coming up with different passwords, make your mobile phone your system of authentication. So before you even try to enter your password, you use your mobile phone to authenticate who you are.  This is done simply by having your phone next to your computer when you’re logging in.  There is no need for SecureID, a text message pin-number, or anything else.  You simply have pull your phone out of your pocket and place it next to your laptop as you’re logging in.  This sounds like magic, but the guys from SlickLogin have come up with some cool technology that allows your computer to broadcast a unique sound that humans can’t hear but your mobile phone will and it will relay to the website you’re accessing that you are who you say you are.  That’s the super-basic and simple explanation of how it works.  So I’ll be curious to see what the guys do now that they’re a part of Google and how this technology will be integrated into Google.  I wonder if we’ll see this technology rolled into Android in the near future.

Of course, this technology won’t be available anytime soon, so until then, we all have to deal with passwords. I’ve heard of different tactics and they basically trade ease of remembering for security.  It’s either easy to remember and insecure or hard to remember but secure.  For instance, you could have a base password of “password” that you use, but you always append a different set of characters or numbers depending on the site you visit.  It could be as simple as appending the first character of the site, so if you’re logging in to Amazon, your password would be “passworda” or if you visit Facebook, it would be “passwordf”.  You could get more complex and append the number of characters in the name of the site, so the password for Amazon becomes “password6” and for Facebook, you get “password8”.  A simple trick, but this does give you different passwords for different sites thereby making it a little harder (not impossible) for hackers to access other sites if your password does get compromised.

Again, security is only good if you remember to use it, so you have to figure out a system that works for you.  Also, you need to asses your own risk levels, if you’re a millionaire that gets lots of press, you’re at a much higher risk than a random person who only goes online to check email.  But you also shouldn’t assume no one is trying to hack you because everyone is a target, so keep your password safe.

I heard about the legislation being passed in CA to require phones to have a mobile kill switch that would make it less desirable to phone thieves to steal phones since they would be useless once they’re reported stolen. There’s lots of third-party software that allows you to remote wipe you phones, but this would be something that is built into the hardware and controlled by the carriers probably.  While it sounds great for consumers because fewer thieves would be trying to steal your phone, what about hackers who once they hack the manufacturer or the carriers would be able to access anyone’s phone.  This makes a very large target for hackers and a single point of failure.  I also wonder what would happen if false reports of stolen phones start becoming normal and your jealous ex or even if buddies jokingly report your phone stolen and you lose everything on your phone and it becomes a brick.  Kind of scary sounding, right?

So according to the article, they are trying to make this a federal law.  I really don’t know if it’s a good idea, but luckily we all know how slow the government is and it would take a while for manufacturers and carriers to implement something.

Excerpt from the article:

On Thursday, US Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) introduced national legislation to require a way to disable smartphones remotely. The goal is to deter theft and protect consumers, but this defense against thieves might come with greater vulnerability to hackers, according to a mobile industry trade group.