iOS vs Android Home Screens and the Nexus 7

Well with all the buzz around the Google Nexus 7 I decided to get one. So one thing that I though was really interesting is how the home screens are laid out. I found this a bit odd coming from the iPhone world.













When you compare the two, they sorta look like this.

The Apple devices always home to the left most page. So when you press the home button twice you end up on the left.



How Android is Different

With the Android device, the home page is always in the center. You can navigate two pages to the left or right. But pressing the home button twice always takes you to the center page. Once I figured this out, it made sense.



However, the thing that really threw me off at first was the Android widgets. With iOS, the only thing that shows up on a page are icons or folders. No deviations from that. With Android, you can put Widgets on a page. Widgets are little mini apps that can take anywhere from a row of space to the entire page. The home page on the Nexus 7 is filled with a Google Play widget. It took me quite a bit of playing around to figure this out.



I think Google would be better off to make the widget maybe half a page or smaller. That way, the new apps are installed on the home page and users can see as they are added. Without that sort of behavior it is less than obvious where new app icons get added.



First Impressions

The size and weight of the Nexus 7 are pretty cool. It is a great device for reading books. Although, I do think Google would be better off with their own ePub reader. Finding and installing one took much more work than it should have.



Anyway, I'll add more as I spend more time with it.

The Right way to Redirect a Page

Well it seems like every time I do something new with my website, there is always something to learn. I'm in the process of rewriting the CMS I use for the how to's and examples on http://blueskyworkshop.com/topics/. I know I needed to use an HTTP header to forward pages. But after some additional reading, I learned what I was doing was not enough.



To tell a search engine like Google a page has moved, you have to send it a 301 Moved Permanently header. Then, the next time Google's spider reads the site, it will move the statistics associated with the page from the old location to the new one. This is done in PHP as follows:

<?php
// Permanent redirection
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://www.somacon.com/");
exit();
?>

Get the details from Somacon here. The post includes a number of examples for several different languages.



I should be able to confirm the older pages are no longer being referenced using Google Analytics. Anyway, I guess we will see in a few weeks.

Google IO 2012 Sessions on the Net

This is totally awesome! Google has made all the Google IO 2012 sessions available on the Net. So if you were like me who would have loved to go and get those goodies, but couldn't, at least you can listen to the sessions.

Learn a Language while you Surf

Ran across this video on CNet today. It gives a pointer to this language immersion extension for Chrome.



Essentially it allows the plugin to insert foreign words and phrases into the pages you browse. The context should help you learn the language quickly. Anyway, looks like it could be very cool and well worth sharing.

Google Chrome and Drive for iOS

At Google IO this week, Google announced Chrome and Drive for iOS. This is a pretty big deal in my opinion, but there wasn't that must coverage. So I have dug up some links if you are interested.

• Techrunch: Chrome for iOS Review


• CNET: Google Drive for iOS

Chrome on iOS

Why put Chrome on iOS? Well the short answer is money. Google make a lot of money from the Chrome browser as it doesn't have to pay to feature its search engine on the browser. In addition, Chrome uses the same HTML rendering engine, Webkit, that Safari does. So in the end, like all the other iOS browsers, Google is just re-skinning the UI.



So how did they do? Good but not great. They have come up with a very clean Chrome like UI. For me, the most annoying thing is no quick access to bookmarks. The iOS Chrome has an options button like the wrench you have on your desktop versions. So to get to your Bookmarks, you must click Options -> BookMarks -> Your Bookmark. That's 3 clicks every time you want a bookmark!!!! Annoying. Now the new Tab feature does show most commonly used pages so as you use your browser, that should be a good way to get to your favorite sites. But come on Google, three clicks? Give me a bookmark button somewhere and a bookmark bar. It is not gonna take up that much real estate.



Google Drive

Sounds like from the review, this app is pretty much read only. But really, at this point is that at all surprising? App integration will take a while and right now, you just don't create that much stuff on an iPad anyway. Read only should be fine.

Tablet Wars just Heating up with Google Nexus 7

With the Microsoft Surface announcement and now the Google Nexus 7, it would seem we have all the major players entered in the big tablet competition. But wait, there's more! As CNET reports via Boy Genius Report, Amazon is readying two new Kindle tablets for an end of July release. So you may want to wait on that Nexus 7 purchase for a month just to see what the options are.



Nexus 7 Review

CNET has a complete hands on review of the Nexus 7. Basically, a beautiful looking tablet with great performance for only $199. The Nexus has no expansion capabilities (no SD card slot or memory options beyond 16GB). But unless you have a large movie or music collection, this is gonna be just fine for most people. The fact that it is Wifi only should not be a surprise given the price.



There are a couple of key points for me.

• Media - Can Google compete with Apple and Amazon on movies and books and such. To me, there is no clear advantage to going with Google in this area. While there are for Apple and Amazon Prime. My idea. Buy Netflix and offer it for free or at a big discount on your devices. That would get some attention.


• Voice - Can they do better at voice than Siri. I'm waiting for more info on this. Some of the reviews seem to imply you can do voice dictation without an Net connection. That would be cool if it turns out to be true.

Anyway, things are getting very interesting in the summer of 2012!

Google News worth Another Look

Have you looked at Google News recently? I had not in a while and was surprised by the improvements after using the system for a while.



Customize

The main thing that is different is you can customize a lot of stuff. You can choose which news sources you prefer so those are favored over others. You can also add new categories to the list of topics on the left. This is a bit hit and miss. For example, I added a category for Java which seems to work pretty good. However, when I added JavaScript, I received a number of stories that had a JavaScript error message in them. That was a bit of a hoot.



Trending Topics

One other feature that I really like is how trending topics are incorporated. If you click on "Technology" for example, under that heading a list of the current trending topics related to tech are displayed. This is a great use of their search data and very useful.



So check it out, it is another good data point when looking for the latest news in tech.

Duck Duck Go, a Retro Search Engine

Do you miss the good old days when your search engine just searched? When it only searched for information on the Internet and didn't try to show you localized information? Or social information?



Then DuckDuckGo.com may be the site for you. It is a retro style search engine that doesn't track you. Simple, easy to use. Check it out, its worth a look.



In fact, the site has been doing well, check out the story on SearchEngineLand.

Want to Develop a Blogger Gadget?

Have you ever considered developing your own gadget for Google Blogger? Well there is a developer guide for that. Get the details here.



Gadgets for Blogger Dev Guide

Sky Drive and Google Drive take on DropBox

Big news in the cloud computing world. Yesterday Microsoft announced new updates to its Sky Drive and today Google announced Google Drive. Both of these products are direct competitors to Dropbox which is one of my favorite Internet products.



How the Products Work

Installing the software sets up a special folder on your hard disk. Any files copied to this folder are synced to the Internet. So I have an online backup, big deal. Right? But what happens when I install the same software on my iPhone, my iPad, my second laptop? Suddenly all my devices are automatically synchronized with all my data. Powerful stuff.



What do SkyDrive and Google Drive do better than DropBox?

Well first, both services offer a lot more disk space than Dropbox. For $120/yr, Dropbox gives you 50gb of disk space. Google and Microsoft are offering 100gb for around $50/yr. That is quite a discount.



Google Drive offers Google Docs integration. You can edit Word and Excel files on the web and then have them synced to your devices. In addition, Google Drive looks to have some very interesting photo and video sharing features that seem to be unique.



SkyDrive offers Microsoft Office integration with their online office offering.



What don't SkyDrive and Google Drive Offer?

First off, Dropbox offers support on pretty much all mobile devices (iOS, Android) and operating systems (Windows, OS X, Linux). The new contenders do not. Issues include:

• Neither new product supports Linux


• Google supports Android but not iOS, though it is coming soon


• SkyDrive supports iOS and Windows Phone but not Android


• Google docs can only be edited from the Web. You can't edit them from your local copies. In fact, you only get links to your docs and no local copies.


• Sharing features for SkyDrive do not work on the Mac OS X version

Bottom Line

These moves are gonna shake things up both for the cloud drive market and for the online backup market. Dropbox is still way easier to use and is much slicker than its two rivals. I would expect a price cut or a storage increase very quickly from Dropbox.



Apple has everything in place to be a competitor in this space. However, if they stay isolated in their ecosystem, they surrender this market to their competitors.



In the end, this means more options and better deals for us end users. Hooray for that!



Reviews and General Posts

The Verge: Hands On

Google Drive FAQ



Cloud Drives Compared

Here are the articles comparing cloud drive features.

PCWorld: Google Drive vs the Rest

Laptop Mag: Cloud drives compared

The Verge: All the Cloud Drives Compared

Engadget: Google Drive vs the Rest



Google Terms Controversy

Late in the day there was some controversy about Google Terms of service. My take is it was much ado about nothing. Once your read Google Terms of Service everything looks ok. But if you want to make up your own mind check out these links.

ZDNet: How far do Googles terms of service go?

CNET: Who owns your files?

Google Terms of Service

Posting Links through Twitter

I have been working heads down for the last few months and have been neglecting my blog a bit. So I just realized, Google Reader is no longer auto posting links of interest to the blog.



How I Find Stories

I find stories of interest using Reeder on the iPad using the "Star" feature of Google Reader to feed those stories via RSS to my blog. Apparently Google has dropped the RSS feed for starred stories, so a new method is required to record stories of interest.



Twitter linked to Facebook

Since I can link my Twitter posts to my blog and then to Facebook, I am going to go that route. So now, any stories of interest will be posted on Twitter which will show up here on the blog and in my Facebook wall. And of course, I will be posting links to these posts. So Hopefully this will work better.



Linking your Twitter Account to Facebook

Google Goes with the Flow

I'm not sure I really understand this story, but Google is using an open source network management system that has essentially doubled their throughput. Wired has the story.

My GMail IMAP just stopped working, what do I do?

My GMail IMAP just stopped working this week. It was definitely an issue on the server side since none of my machines could log in. There had been some suspicious activity on my account and I had to change my password. Apparently when that happens, a bit gets flipped turning off your IMAP. Well I asked a question in the Help forms and found out a CAPTCHA gets turned on which is preventing my IMAP from working. To clear it, follow this link.



Clear Your CAPTCHA



It is a mystery to me why GMail doesn't send me an e-mail or something telling me to do this. But anyway, problem solved. Thanks bkennelly from the help forums.

Google Reader Getting Updated this Week

Expect an update to Google Reader this week. Features include an updated interface and better integration with Google+.



Google Reader Blog: New Features

New Admin Tools for Blogger

Google's Blogger has released a new version of its administration tools for its blog.



Blogger Update



I have been using it for about two or three weeks now. The new interface is certainly very stylish. However, some of the fonts seem a bit smallish to me. In addition, things like labels are much more difficult to use. So for me the jury is still out. But it is nice Google is trying to improve things. I can still give a whole-hearted recommendation for using Blogger to start a web site and blog. Still simple and easy to use.

10 Google Plus Tips

Mashable has this story with 10 Google+ tips. Lots of great ideas. For example, use empty circles to save notes or links. Also lots of information on how to control who sees what with posts. A must read for any G+ user.

Google+ Social Network is Here

Well they finally gone and done it. Google has announced they are gonna join the social media game with Google+. Here is a long story and a short one with the details.



Inside Google+ - Wired (Detailed story)

Google Guns for Facebook with Google+ Social Network | PCWorld



Everything sounds promising. Facebook has a pretty horrible user interface and there is no way to group friends or content. To me, reading a Facebook stream is really tough. What if I want to read just the posts from my family? My co workers? etc...



I want to control that and I want to be the only person to know how I am filtering the feed.

Google eyes iMessage, readies rival service, death of text messaging?

I had not thought about this before. But if Apple and Google both provide free messaging services, this could have a huge impact on phone companies. The big question is, will they make their services ubiquitous? Google would seem to be the best candidate for this. I could see them making an app or web app that would allow anyone to message on any device. I can never see Apple creating an Android app. But I could definitely see the reverse.



Report: Google eyes iMessage, readies rival service | Mobile | Macworld



Cellphone Carriers Face Pressure Over Texting - WSJ.com

Android Honeycomb 3.1 Comes To The Asus Eee Pad Transformer

The Asus eee Pad Transformer has gotten Android 3.1. Here is the scoop.



Android Honeycomb 3.1 Comes To The Asus Eee Pad Transformer - HotHardware

Google I/O Live Blog: Google Launches Music, Movies, Android 3.1

Google IO is today. Read Write Web has the details.

Google I/O Live Blog: Google Launches Music, Movies, "Ice Cream Sandwich" & More