Social Networking

Is Online Privacy a Thing of the Past?

With our data being pinched at by every company under the sun, many just assume that there is no such thing as privacy on the internet anymore.

Is this over-generalized statement true?

Yes and no. There is privacy to be had online, the key to obtaining it is to not use the web or interact on social media. That means no Twitter, Facebook or Instagram for you. Not only can you not use social media, how would you like to stop using cloud services such as Dropbox or your favorite and arguably the best email service, GMail.  If you fret about privacy — online is NOT where you want to be.

However, at the price of disclosing information about yourself to certain trusted services, which typically force you to agree to the terms of the service, you get to use the service for free.  Examples include every Google service, every social network, any online shopping destination and more.  However, web services collecting information about you and your data (surfing habits, email, articles in your email and more) only make your experience better. How? Instead of getting ads that do not relate to you, you can have ads served that actually make you want to click or entice you to try a new product that you’ve been looking for. In addition, if you’re in the Google ecosystem user your shipping information can be pulled from GMail so that you can track your packages easier, your emails can be monitored for spam or Google Now can tell your how far you are from work and let you know how light or heavy the traffic is. Now those are details that you should want to know! Just think, by you providing a little bit of your data you get a great user experience in return. So, why the bellyaching?

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Bottom line: Unless you want to lose free and convenient services on the internet, you might want to think twice about complaining.

Operating Systems, Technology

LG Nexus 4; Sold Out

One hour.  One hour is how long it took for Google’s latest Nexus flagship have it’s stock reduced to zero (both 8GB and 16GB versions).

That is pretty impressive.

If you tried to purchase the device there was error after error to be encountered. Some users even experienced Chrome crashing due to the Play Store being so overloaded. Though frustrating, those that showed perseverance have their orders now confirmed and they should have this beast of a smartphone sitting at their doorsteps in a matter of days to a week.

Bottom line: Congratulations to the lucky few. Great job Google on producing a wonderful device that consumers really want. One piece of advice stock up more so that everyone van get one!

Technology

Apple’s New Patent

This is probably the most pathetic thing I have ever heard, Apple has been granted a patent on the iPad’s original design – a rectangle with rounded corners.  To think that any sane person would consider this worthy of a patent is absolutely scary.  How about the guys inside of Cupertino’s lab patent the buttons on the thing as well?

The sheer audacity of this company is just disgusting and these are things that the great Steve Jobs preached?  Why?  If you are so confident that your products are superior in every way (marketshare says otherwise) to the army of competing tablets out there; why would you patent something so trivial and design essential?  Patent D670,286 will finally give some leverage to what Apple has wanted all along; yet, with tablets getting thinner and bezels becoming more curved does this design patent even still matter?

To some this is a win for Apple; however, since Apple decided to wage war on the technological world they have been feeling their own fair share of karma lately.  The California company was just ordered to pay $368 million in damages [Source:PCMag] over FaceTime patents to VirnetX; the patent in question involves using DNS to setup a VPN.  In addition, there are more cases that they have been losing around the world, one of which forced them to place an apology on their website.  In fact, their first attempt had a snide remark in it so they were forced to re-post, seen below:

Bottom line:  All of this fighting simply has to stop; when will Apple learn that you cannot sue everyone without getting hit with the same tactics and losing.  My suggestion to you, Apple, start innovating and stop crying.

Operating Systems, Technology

Windows 8 Full Review

First and foremost, take any negative feelings you may have towards LEARNING, TRYING and EXPERIMENTING and please throw them out of the door.

On Thursday, October 25th 2012 Microsoft released an update to it’s desktop operating system — Windows 8.  Not only can this operating system, from this point further referred to as “OS”, sufficiently run just as Windows 7 did it now offers many new intuitive features that can easily make your productivity skyrocket.  Please note, as with anything you have those naysayers that seem to believe that this single iteration of the OS will be the end of Microsoft.  I can proudly say that they are indeed wrong.  This review will be broken up into sections that will be incredibly easy to parse through.

Installation:

I downloaded by copy of Windows 8 Pro to my desktop machine that was running Windows 7 on Friday.  Getting Windows is probably easier than it has ever been — now you can simply download it or request physical media.  So, before you are allowed to download the OS you must first run a setup tool, which will ensure that all of your applications will work with the Windows 8.  After these preliminary system requirement checks the the download begins, which weighing in at roughly 2 GB downloads pretty quickly in about 20 – 30 minutes.  Now comes the easy part, let your computer do the work.  Many are calling this the easiest Windows install yet; I can do nothing but agree.  After the installation is complete and the OS does it’s initial boot you traverse through the setup screens (signing in, determining your Start Menu preferences etc.) and you are all set to enjoy your new installation.

All in all the process took about 1.5 hours from initial download, payment and first time boot sequence.  After that you’ve never seen boot speeds this fast — but we will save that for later.

Windows 8 Desktop:

Many users, who probably have not even tried Windows 8, argue that Microsoft has neglected power users and are trying to abandon the desktop.  Let me start off by saying:  I am a power user, I sit in Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio for 8 hours per day, come home and use my machine to maintain websites, edit video/photo and more – we have not been neglected at all.

Why?

The desktop behaves in the exact same manner as it always has!  The exact same way.  Except now it has been completely overhauled; yet it still resides in the same shell.  The task manager is very intuitive for users that geek out over processes and how much memory is being consumed by a particular program.  It has a simple interface for a user just wanting to kill and application and an advanced look for those, whom like me, like to get a little dirty.

There is tab after tab available that will allow you deep-dive as much or as little as you would like and if you hate all of the details you can switch to the default with “Fewer details” as the lower left button indicates.  In addition, make note of how much memory your PC with Windows 8 consumes because it is touted that it uses much less memory, which I can say is true.  For example, Chrome is designed to run each tab in a separate process, which can be intense for an older machine — however with Windows 8 your memory will not wince   Although, I don’t encounter memory issues since my machine sports 12 GB of RAM.

Task Manager isn’t the only thing that has been improved, File Explorer has gone from simple to a ribbon filled Office-esque beast, which depending on what is selected can handle just about anything you throw at it.

Speaking of improvements there is a slew of Administrative tools that can now be added to the Start Screen, which includes PowerShell, Services and Windows Firewall with Advanced Security just to name a few.  These applications are not what you would normally expect to receive from a Windows installation — these are robust applications that are fully capable of doing their jobs with or without 3rd party support.  Now, we all know that different vendors will create antivirus, firewall and anti-spyware apps that will take these features to the next level; yet, that is their specialty — Microsoft has done right by including applications that can get the job done just as well.

Start Screen and Windows Apps:

The first thing that you are greeted with after you sign into your new Windows 8 machine in the new start screen sporting the Modern UI from Microsoft.  Is it intuitive?  Yes.  Is it easy to use?  Yes.

Although the Start Screen allows for customization so that it may be setup however you’d like the first portion is initially for apps, which can be changed.  Don’t worry your desktop applications are not lost; a simple right-click and “All Apps” will reveal this lovely screen below:

As you can see nothing is lost.  The navigation might have changed but if you spend 30 minutes tinkering around and getting to know the new Windows you will be glad that you did.  Also, an app that gets used rigorously by me and everyone else “Desktop” is always available for you to visit at anytime; however, sometimes you just do not need to enter the desktop realm to do everything and Microsoft understands this — that is why there are apps available that can take care of many tasks for you ie. MetroTwit for Twitter, Quick Note for short blurbs.  In addition, these Windows apps can be pinned to a side of your screen for increased productivity.  See below:

So, this is just my case with one monitor — just imagine you could be coding on one monitor, have your favorite website up in another and have your Twitter feed pinned on that same monitor.  Windows 8 now has excellent built in multi-monitor support that now even extends the Taskbar; yet another improvement on the already present multi-monitor support found in Windows 7.

Let’s talk about apps.

Are the over 700K like Apples App Store?  No.  Are there over 700K like Google Play?  No.  However, answer this question for me with the hundreds of thousands of apps that these behemoths tout — how many do you ACTUALLY  use, everyday….  That number is probably slim.  The Windows Store is growing to say the least; yet, judging just by my Start Screen alone you can see that they already have some pretty key players:  Netflix, HuluPlus and Google Chrome — with more apps coming.  In fact, upon the release of Windows 8 1000 new apps were added.

My Final Thoughts:

Microsoft, Windows 8 is daring, almost scary good and I absolutely love it.  This OS is able to be used across multiple devices: tablets, desktops, phones; even the XBox 360 has adopted the Modern UI.  Traditional Windows (Windows 7) is the core of this operating system, so with this iteration you get everything that you know and love about it with the added benefits of fast boot and shutdowns (20 seconds or less), lower memory consumption and apps that can not only increase your productivity but even remove extra steps.  Want to search for anything on your computer?  Apps, files, Windows Store — it can be done all from the search.  Want to use all of your legacy applications you had installed before the upgrade?  They’ll be there waiting for you.  Want your external gadgets to work with the new OS?  It will.

At a price-point of $39.99 for a limited time, there is absolutely no reason to not upgrade; with it you’ll get improved performance and productivity.  Meet and Get Windows 8 [HERE]

For those of you who think this change is too radical and that this OS is so hard; do yourself a favor and give it a chance.

Microsoft has completely changed their image for this release, this is the new Microsoft they are here to stay and I like it.

Mobile Operating Systems

Impending Android Announcement

With Google’s latest Android announcement around the corner; Android fans, myself included, are on the edge of their seats.  There are many predictions to be had regarding what Google will show us on Monday, October 29th.

However, one thing is almost for certain:  We will see a new Nexus device.  What exactly does Nexus mean you ask?  Pure unaltered Android without lousy carrier or manufacturer modifications.  That means no extraneous bloatware can spoil yet another glorious Android device.  In addition, it is rumored that there will be a slew of new Nexus devices from many manufacturers just waiting to grace your pockets with stock Android greatness.  On the other hand, it would honestly be fantastic if Google would allow any OEM to “create” a Nexus device just by following strict guidelines:

  • No carrier installed apps
  • No Android UI changes
  • Meeting certain hardware specifications

Instantly we would have a variety of top-tier Android devices that were powered to get the job done.  This would be good for consumers as well as Google because it would put that confidence back to the Nexus name, which is one that Verizon almost put a black mark on by withholding system updates to their version of Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus.

Additionally, it is speculation that Google will refresh the Nexus 7 line by introducing a 32 GB model and potentially a model with 3G/4G support.  Speaking of powerful tablets; Samsung is rumored to be making a 10-inch Nexus tablet for our enjoyment.

On the other hand, this all boils down to a possible update to the Android operating system, which is currently at 4.1.2.  Yes, Android 4.2 (Key Lime Pie) is on the horizon.  Does Android need a new full-update or an incremental update.  Remember, Android 4.0 and 4.1 together have a combined marketshare of 25%; so, is this the best time for a new version to be released?  It seems that OEMs typically put either the latest or next to latest version of Android onto the devices they build so, just as a new version will be a good thing for us early adopters — how long will it take to penetrate the market?

Bottom line:  What happens at Google’s announcement will likely awe us.  Be prepared for a new Nexus device of sorts and if a new version of Android comes out, be prepared to sell it to your friends — let’s help take away market from Gingerbread ( Android 2.3) and give it to finer tuned versions of Google’s OS!

Tech for the masses, meant to empower, educate and inform by Dexter Johnson.