The New HTC One

HTC today officially unveiled the new HTC One originally codenamed M8 and it’s clear from the off that it’s very similar to the original HTC One. Many people have criticised HTC for not being innovative enough and sticking with such a similar design, much like Samsung did with the Galaxy S5. However you have to question, If something’s not broken why fix it? and that’s the approach that HTC have taken with the new HTC One. Before the release of the original One last year HTC were on a downward spiral and were really struggling against the likes of Samsung, Apple and LG. So it makes sense that they would not mess with a device that has been as successful as the HTC One.

That being said the HTC One has not been left short when it comes to updates and has received some significant upgrades with this new version such as a larger screen and an amazing camera. The phone comes with Android KitKat 4.4 as expected, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor and 2GB RAM. Storage wise you can choose from a 16Gb or 32Gb model and like the HTC One Max it also now comes with a microSD card slot. The display is now 5” diagonal and the resolution remains the same at Full HD (1,920 x 1080).

In terms of design the new HTC One follows the design of the original very closely and keeps the curved metallic back which was a popular design feature for many people. Above and below the display you will notice the BoomSound speakers which are still classed as the best sounding speakers on any smartphone and with the larger form factor HTC has been able to get even more volume out of them. The phone is available in three colours; Gun Metal, Silver and because it’s the ‘in thing’ a gold version is available too.

I couldn’t end this article without talking about what is possibly the biggest feature of this new model and that’s the cameras, no I didn’t make a mistake there a ‘two’ cameras on this device which HTC have dubbed ‘Duo Camera’. Above the main camera is a smaller image sensor which measures depth information in your photos, which HTC says will let you do some nifty effects after the fact. One such feature is simulating the bokeh effect, which blurs your background very subtly and artistically. You can also get a slight 3D effect using the Duo Cameras although it’s not as good as a real 3D camera it does make for some interesting photos.

What do you think of the new HTC One? Are you considering getting one or are you holding out for one of the other devices launching later this year? As usual we would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section.

 

iTunes on Android?

We often say that certain things will never happen such as Apple releasing Android versions of it’s applications, but every now and then we are taken by surprise. One such surprise is the prospect of iTunes being released for Android. iTunes has long been an Apple only product with the exception of the iTunes version for Windows. However that could soon be about to change if recent reports are to be believed.

Currently Apple has iTunes radio which is a free ad-supported service that allows users to listen to music and create stations based on artists, song and genre. It doesn’t however have a streaming service. Apple is reportedly in talks regarding a streaming service like Spotify though it has been stated that talks are in very early stages.

If Apple were to release iTunes for Android it would certainly shake things up. Although Google does have a music service on Android it’s music collection is quite sparse when compared to iTunes due to licensing restrictions in certain countries. Extending the reach of iTunes would give other services such as spotify a run for their money.

Steve Jobs was dead against bringing iTunes to Windows originally and felt the same about Android. However with Tim Cook at the helm it seems anything is possible as he publicly revealed that he has "no religious issues" porting its software over.

I would personally just like to be able to get iTunes radio in the United Kingdom before worrying about on-demand streaming services. What do you think of the idea of iTunes being available on Android handsets? Is this a bold move by Apple or a terrible idea? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

 

Google Drive Pricing Reduced

With more and more data moving into the cloud we are seeing a bigger demand for affordable cloud storage. Google launched Drive just over two years ago with a competitive pricing model and has been a popular choice for storage ever since. One aspect of Google Drive that appeals to many is the deep integration with Google docs allowing you to easily create a document, spreadsheet or presentation, store it in Google’s cloud and easily share it with others using Google Drive.

Recently Google announced that it was slashing the prices of Google Drive to make it more affordable to everyone. Now you can get 100GB of storage for just $1.99 a month instead of $4.99. For those with much bigger requirements such as myself you can get a whopping 1TB of storage for just $9.99 which is insanely good value at just 1 cent per GB. When compared to competitor Dropbox which gives you 2GB free and a maximum of 100GB for $9.99 this is an extremely generous offer.

It’s likely in the coming weeks that we will see a retaliation from some of the other cloud storage providers who will likely reduce pricing in order to compete with Google’s new pricing structure. Whilst we are unlikely to see anything like the pricing offered by Google we should expect to see some action from other providers such as Dropbox, OneDrive, Amazon and Box.

You may be wondering what you would do with 1TB of storage from Google Drive? personally I use it as an extension of the memory on my iPhone. Sadly you can’t add any external storage on iPhone via SD card so I take advantage of Google’s generous 1TB offer and use it to expand the storage on my ageing 8GB iPhone 4 allowing me to store more photo’s, videos and documents than would normally be possible.

Have you taken advantage of the new pricing model for Google Drive? What do you primarily use cloud storage for? As usual we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

 

Google Voice Merging with Hangouts

Like it or not it seems Google+ is here to stay as Google moves to integrate yet another service into the social network. If you thought that the outrage over Google+ comments merging with YouTube was bad just wait until the company’s extremely popular Google Voice becomes integrated into Hangouts, part of the Google+ network.

Google Voice the free VOIP phone call, texting voicemail and voicemail-transcription service will soon merge with Hangouts both on iOS and Android and eliminating Google Voice as a separate product.

Fans of Google Voice have already taken to Twitter to protest their concerns over the merge and the impact it may have on the service. Others are just angry at being tied into Google+ as they don’t wish to use Google’s social network.

Google recently suffered embarrassment when it’s Hangout service suffered a prolonged outage on Monday which is unlikely to inspire any confidence in the merger between Google Voice and Hangouts.

The idea of Google Voice and Hangouts merging shouldn’t come as a surprise as Google did hint at this being a possibility way back in May last year when Google+ Product Manager Nikhyl Singhal said:

"Hangouts is designed to be the future of Google Voice, and making/receiving phone calls is just the beginning. Future versions of Hangouts will integrate Google Voice more seamlessly."

So far there is no word on when this merger will take place but with Google’s I/O conference coming up in a few months time we could expect to hear this announced during this time.

What do you think about the planned merger between these two Google services? Have you embraced Google+ or are you trying to avoid it like the plague? As usual we would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.

 

Office for iPad to be announced next week

Microsoft has announced that office for iPad is coming soon and will officially unveil it next week during a press event. The event will be the first time we see new CEO Satya Nadella speak publicly to the press since replacing Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft.

Reports say that Microsoft is sending invitations to some members of the press regarding the press event in San Francisco taking place on March 27. It is thought Nadella will himself introduce Office for iPad which is rumoured to closely resemble Office for iPhone which launched last year.

Office 365 allows subscribers to install office on up to five devices excluding Windows Phone and Windows RT devices which get free access. As with the iPhone version users will be able to view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on the go.

Nadella recently spoke of his intentions to prioritise cloud services and in particular cloud services on mobile devices so this fits in with that vision. Microsoft also recently made OneNote available on Mac as part of this effort.

We are likely to hear lot more from Microsoft about it’s future plans at the Build Developer Conference which starts on April 1st. The biggest announcement will likely be the release of Windows 8.1 update 1 but it will be interesting to see what else they have up their sleeve under the reign of Satya Nadella.

 

Android Wear: Google's wearables platform announced

Fitness trackers, Watches and glasses? You can't go far on the web without a tech news site talking about wearable tech. Samsung is on it's second version of it's Galaxy Gear smartwatch, Apple is rumoured to be making a smartwatch and that's just the heavyweights. Rumours started surfacing a while back about Google making a smartwatch of it’s own, and today we finally have some good information about what Google is working on.

Today Google announced that they are working on Android Wear a new version of Android designed specifically for wearable devices. Android Wear is designed to be used on a wide range of wearable technology devices however Google says it will start in the area that makes the most sense and that is the SmartWatch.

Android Wear has been designed to bring contextual information to a user when it's most needed. In theory this means getting the latest updates from social apps, instant messaging and photos along with showing you the best/fastest route to get to your next meeting or appointment.

Google released a concept video for Android Wear today which as you can see has much in common with Google Now and Google glass. As with other devices running Google Now, Android Wear is voice enabled following the "Okay Google" dictation scheme of gathering information. Along with providing useful information at glance on your wrist, Android Wear will also feature health monitoring abilities that allow for real time access to data for users and applications on your smartphone.

A key part of making a successful smartwatch includes applications, and this has been proven by the Pebble smartwatch. Google has already released a preview version of Android Wear to existing Android developers to start preparing their existing apps to take advantage of Android Wear. Google also say’s that it will be releasing further API's and resources to developers in the coming weeks.

We are likely to hear a lot more about Google's upcoming Android Wear at the Google I/O conference but so far it certainly seems like an interesting concept and I personally can't wait to see this develop further and become available for consumers. It was said that 2014 was going to be the year of wearable technology and that certainly seems true so far and we are only three months into the year.

What do you think about Google's smartwatch concept? Do you think Android Wear will be a good addition to the Google Android Platform? As usual we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.


 

Mozilla abandons Firefox Metro version

Windows 8’s controversial Metro interface has received another blow today as Mozilla has revealed that after 2 years worth of development and testing that it is shelving the Metro based version of Firefox. Microsoft launched Windows 8 with a new Metro start screen 2 years ago and developer interest in the platform has been slow. The latest snub from Mozilla is not likely to help matters either. Microsoft have been trying to entice developers to write touch friendly apps for it’s new touch interface but so far the interest has been minimal.

Recently Microsoft announced details for Windows 8.1 update 1 which gives users the ability to boot straight to the desktop and bypass the Metro interface all together. Along with this update there will be an option to run metro based applications on the desktop and use the taskbar to switch between them. It seems even Microsoft isn’t sure what it want’s in regards to Windows 8 either. So it comes as no surprise that Mozilla decided it just wasn’t worth their while working on a Metro version of their browser.

In a blog post the vice president of Firefox said, "On any given day, we have, for instance, millions of people testing pre-release versions of Firefox desktop, but we've never seen more than 1,000 active daily users in the Metro environment." The blog post goes on to explain that with so few people interested in this version that bug testing would take far too long as there were not enough people actively using the software to properly test it and squash bugs.

With such a big software developer giving a ‘vote of no confidence’ on Microsoft’s new interface you have to wonder what the future holds for Windows and how Microsoft will move on from this. The idea behind Metro was supposed to be to carry the Windows PC power into the tablet market, a very different strategy from Google and Apple’s approach, which expanded their smaller screen smartphone OSes to tablets. If software developers don't adopt to Metro, though, and stick only with the older "desktop" interface, it undermines Microsoft's strategy.

 

Gmail adds new Un-subscribe button

Keeping our inboxes free from spam can sometimes seem like a never ending battle as we continue to receive newsletters and marketing content that we never requested. Often these emails contain a link to unsubscribe from the service that has sent you the unsolicited mail, however this doesn't always work and isn’t an ideal solution.

Thankfully email services are getting better at weeding out the amount of spam that reaches our inboxes, but the problem is far from over. Google has been a pioneer when it comes making email better and it's latest addition to Gmail is likely to be welcomed by many, including businesses that have fallen victim to being incorrectly marked as spam. Google has added an unsubscribe button allowing Gmail users to easily unsubscribe from mailing lists when they receive a marketing email.

In the past when a user doesn't want to receive marketing material from certain companies they have marked the email as spam which can then cause issues for the company that sent it. If too many people mark something as spam incorrectly it can have a negative affect when that company try’s to email users that actually do want to receive the content.

Google’s new unsubscribe feature will make it much easier to avoid unsolicited email in the future and without having to visit the website sending the email and trying to locate their ‘hard to find’ unsubscribe link. Google said it has already started rolling out this new feature and that you should see the option in your inbox very soon.

Whilst we are never likely to be completely spam free as those determined enough to evade spam filters will continue to work to do so. However this move by Google is certainly a step in the right direction and should alleviate the confusion between what is unwanted email and what is actually spam.  

 

Facebook video ads coming soon

Facebook have again been playing with the ‘News Feed’ again, no it’s not another layout or tweak to the user interface this time it’s Video advertising. Facebook first announced they were testing video advertisements late last year and rolled out a beta version of their video ad platform to advertisers in December of last year.

Before anybody gets worried about noisy adverts playing in their news feeds there is a silver lining in that video adverts will auto-play however there will not be any sound unless the user actually clicks on the advertisement.

Advertisements will be sold much in the same way that television adverts are sold and will be based on Targeted Gross Rating Points aimed to target a specific audience over a short period of time. Similarly the adverts will also be priced much like a television advert would be with prices ranging from $1 million to $2.5 million initially on launch. Judging from that we can assume that these video ads will be targeted at large corporations rather than small to medium businesses.

Facebook will be using Nielson and Ace Metrix to track and measure the video ads and work with advertisers to review the quality and proposed engagement level of each ad before it becomes available on Facebook.

So when will these adverts start to appear in your news feed? Facebook announced in a blog post that we should be seeing these video advertisements in the next few months. If you feel you really don’t want these adverts or they are too obtrusive it’s likely that popular adblockers will be updated in order to hide these from your news feed.

How do you feel about video ads in your news feed? Do you think they will be obtrusive? or will we just learn to ignore them like we have with other adverts. Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

 

Flappy Bird to return?

It's now been a month since developer Dong Nguyen took the decision to remove flappy bird from both the App Store and Google Play Store. The move was met with a wave of speculation about the reasons behind the decision ranging from things such as a lawsuit threat from Nintendo and death threats from angry gamers. However the developer continued to stick to his original story about his reasons and stated that it was due to people overusing the game and the amount of criticism and attention he had received as a result of creating flappy bird. Dong was hounded by the media after creating flappy bird and was apparently overwhelmed with the amount of requests from press organizations.

Not long after flappy bird was taken down a plethora of copycat apps flooded the App Store and Google Play with developers trying to cash in on the success of flappy bird including myself, though mine was more for fun and I didn’t try to monetize it either. Apple and Google have since taken action and are removing some of these apps that are either too similar or use the word ‘flappy’ in the title, that being said there are still a large number of these available to download in each store.

Just as we were all beginning to move on and forget about flappy bird and the news coverage had all but died a death, Flappy Bird is again back in the limelight after the magazine Rolling Stone managed to bag an interview with the 28 year old Vietnam developer. The interview is very interesting and talks about the reasons for creating flappy bird and the inspirations behind the app as well as revealing that Dong is considering re-releasing the app again but this time it would include a warning about safety and not over playing the game and the importance of taking regular breaks (sounds more like long distance driving advice) whether or not this comes to fruition remains to be seen and we have to question whether anybody really cares whether or not the app makes a return. The world of technology and apps moves very quickly and what is hot one week may not necessarily be hot the next. Personally I think flappy bird has flown the nest and that’s where it should be left, if Dong Nguyen decided to release a new game though that would be a different matter.