With its new video calling feature can Vonage Mobile really take on Skype? [Q&A]
On Tuesday, Vonage introduced free video calling into its mobile app for iPhone and Android, rounding out a suite which already offers features like free app-to-app calls, texts, photo and location sharing, as well as international calling.
I chatted to Nick Lazzaro, Vonage’s SVP Product Development, Information Technology and Managing Director Mobile Services, about the new addition, the company’s plans for the future, and what he thinks is next for the mobile industry.
Jam with Google Play Music Manager
The cloud is now used for many things, from simply storing documents, to create and editing files online. Google Play, in addition to many other things, offers a place to store up to 20,000 tracks that can then be listened to online or with a range of mobile devices. This number relates only to songs from your "personal collection" and is in addition to any purchases you make. Google Play Music Manager is the tool you need to get everything up and running.
Install and launch the app, sign into your Google account and you’ll be asked where you current music collection is stored. There is support for iTunes and Windows Media Player, but there’s also the option of just opting to work with files stored in My Music, or any other folder for that matter. If you have your music scattered across multiple folders, you can add them all to your Google library.
What Facebook Home means to Apple and Google
How important is Facebook really? The answer may come soon after April 12, when the social network releases Home to Google Play. The Android add-on usurps the homescreen, putting interactions/people first and pushes apps to the background. This, ah, Home invasion means potential trouble for Apple and Google, but in vastly different ways. Apps anchor both their platforms, curated content and the digital lifestyles users adopt. Facebook bets that between the choice of both ways, human relationships matter more.
For either the fruit-logo company or search and information giant, another question is perhaps more significant: Is Facebook's mobile experience already good enough? Related: Do most users want to be enmeshed in a constant stream of social updates and interactions most of the time? Affirmative answer to either, or both, spells trouble for the platform developers but most worrisome for Apple, for which Facebook Home affronts and condemns the entire business model.
Microsoft releases half-ready Windows Phone app sale site
I suppose I could be charitable and say Microsoft's heart is in the right place with its latest Windows Phone announcement. The fact is rivals like Amazon and Google needed some good competition from new kid on the mobile block. The Amazon Android App Store offers a paid app for free everyday and Google Play regularly has sales for various causes for celebration that the company cooks up. Microsoft has reason to come up with a bit of competition against those things, and today does just that.
The company announces its new "Red Stripe Deals" site and, no, it has nothing to do with Jamaican beer. The new site is a collection of apps and games that have been discounted for Windows Phone customers. The concept is a great idea and is sure to be a hit for the mobile audience.
HTC First phones Home
Well, the rumors were false. Facebook didn't release a phone today, not that I'm surprised. There are reasons why we write so few rumor stories here at BetaNews -- they often are false. "We're not building a phone. We're not building an operating system", CEO Mark Zuckerberg said early this afternoon. But the social network has launched an OEM program for the new Facebook Home, which displaces the default Android start screen. HTC is first partner. Aptly named then, the smartphone is called HTC First.
Preorders start today, and the device will be available exclusively from AT&T, in four colors (black, pale blue, red and white), on April 12. Facebook Home, which also will be downloadable same day for HTC One X and One X+ and Samsung Galaxy S III and Note II, is First's default experience. Essentially, the social network becomes primary user interface on top of Android.
There's a thriving malware market, and you're the commodity
If you listen to security companies then you may come to believe that the Internet is one big dark alley. Of course the industry has a vested interest in having you believe that you are in more or less perpetual danger. Now Dr. Web, the antivirus company, has released its monthly threat report, and the danger is almost as bad as the industry wants you to think.
The most "popular" threat during the month of March was Trojan.hosts programs: "Hosts file containing DNS server IP addresses has been compromised 186,496 times, which constitutes over 10 percent of the detected threat total". The threat is commonly spread through malicious or compromised web sites. In early 2013 the files were being detected at a rate of over 9,500 infections per day.
What is Facebook's new Home on Android?
It's the question many people have asked since the social network announced its April 4 event one week ago. This live blog answers the question.
Today's "new Home on Android" follows by nearly a month, a massive user interface redesign, as Facebook unifies the look and feel across devices and puts more emphasis on mobile. Obviously Android is part of that. Paragraphs are reverse order, with newest up top. All times EDT.
Get notified about Windows 8 updates
It’s no secret that Windows 8 has seen some controversial changes, in particular the removal of the Start menu. But with all the focus on these larger issues, you might have missed some smaller, but also significant design decisions. Like, for example, that there’s no longer any desktop alert when Windows updates are available.
There is a new alert on the logon screen, of course. And you can always set up Windows to install updates automatically. But, if you don’t reboot often (or you bypass the logon screen), and you want to keep tighter control over your updates, then you’ll need to look elsewhere for a little extra assistance. And Windows Update Notifier is the perfect candidate.
Gartner says the PC has no future
Today, Gartner offers grim prognostications for the PC's future, which is not surprising. That the analyst firm took so long disturbs and reveals much about how all these consultants seek to preserve client contracts before anything else. I've warned for years that connected-devices would diminish the personal computer's relevance, much like the mainframe's decline three decades ago. The PC era is over, as I asserted here 26 months ago. On Halloween 2008, I asked in a Microsoft Watch post: "Will your next PC be a smartphone?" What took Gartner so long? The "new device religion" analysis still misses the mark, too.
Following IDC's lead, Gartner now combines PCs, smartphones and tablets into a single forecast. By that measure, in 2012, Android worldwide device shipments (497 million) exceeded Windows (346.5 million) and will more than double (to 1.07 billion) by 2014. Analysts warn the operating system that defined the PC era will struggle with Apple iOS and OS X to be the second dominant platform. By many measures, the circumstance looks grim for Microsoft and Windows, and that's already the popular sentiment today among blog posts and news stories about Gartner's forecast. Don't believe them.
Backupify launches additional cloud-to-cloud backup tools for Google Apps
Backupify is introducing an enhanced set of backup and recovery features designed to support its core offering for enterprise-level organizations on Google Apps. The "Spring Release for Google Apps" includes tools built to offer more efficient ways for administrators and end-users to manage their backups within larger organizations.
The update, which builds on the Winter Release launched last December, adds the following advanced data recovery and admin controls:
LG's Optimus G Pro lands in Japan at NTT DOCOMO
On Thursday, LG announced that the Optimus G Pro, the company's Android flagship smartphone, is now available at Japanese carrier NTT DOCOMO. In mid-January, NTT DOCOMO was the first to reveal the handset, a number of important specifications and its release date -- April 2013.
Unlike its international sibling which sports a 5.5-inch panel, the NTT DOCOMO variant of the Optimus G Pro comes with a smaller 5.0-inch IPS display. The resolution is the same -- 1080 by 1920 but the density is higher -- 440 ppi (pixels per inch). NTT DOCOMO originally revealed that the Optimus G Pro will ship with a 1.7 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, but today LG said that in fact the newer and faster, still Qualcomm-made, 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragn 600 processor is used instead.
URL Snooper lets you download streaming media files
If you’d like to download a YouTube video then there are plenty of options available, from web services like KeepVid to dedicated tools like Free YouTube Download.
Capturing streaming videos from other sites can be a challenge, though, as their URLs are often concealed by scripts and similar tricks. Examining the page source will sometimes give you clues, but URL Snooper could be a simpler option: the program just watches your internet activity, and displays a list of any streaming URLs it finds.
Android 4.2 Jelly Bean comes to ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity
One month after the company updated the Transformer Pad TF300 to Android 4.2, ASUS has announced that the Transformer Pad Infinity is also poised to receive the second Jelly Bean iteration.
On its Facebook page, ASUS posted a picture which lists the Android 4.2 update as coming to the Infinity, with the roll-out started yesterday. So what do you get from the upgrade?
Build Retina-compatible websites with Xara Web Designer 9 Premium
Established UK developer Xara has released Xara Web Designer 9 and Xara Web Designer Premium 9, the latest builds of its popular web design package for Windows. Version 9 automatically supports the creation of HiDPi/Retina-compatible websites (Premium only), updates support for HTML5 and CSS3 standards and adds a dedicated 64-bit build for 64-bit systems with more than 4GB RAM installed.
Improved HTML5 and CSS3 compatibility has a number of benefits for Xara developers, most notably more efficient and faster loading websites. This is due to the fact many page elements that were previously converted into images can now be rendered natively in HTML5. These include rectangles -- simple, rounded and skewed, box shadows, text with drop shadows and various page backgrounds.
Malwarebytes Secure Backup saves to the cloud
Malwarebytes has unveiled its new Secure Backup product, an online service created in conjunction with SOS Online Backup, which automatically scans your files before they’re uploaded to the cloud. This ensures that, if you’re ever hit by a virus, you’ll know you can restore a backup without any danger of reinfection. And if you want to share a file with others, then, again, you can all be confident that it’s clean.
The current Secure Backup download is a beta offering 5GB of online storage, which will expire after 14 days. If you like the idea and decide to upgrade, though, there are 100GB ($59.95 per year), 200GB ($119.95) or 500GB ($299.95) packages available.
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