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Google Latitude Introduces Auto-Checkins

// February 10th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // android, Mobile

The location-based frenzy has gotten really interesting over the past 12-18 months, and gets more interesting almost daily, especially with the latest ‘check-in’ bonanza. However, current iterations, such as Foursquare, GoWalla, and GetGlue all require you to manually click the ‘check-in’ button. It requires you to do something to share your location with whatever group you’ve chosen.

Last Tuesday, though, Google upped the ante with a new version of Google Maps for the Android operating system, with a new version of Google’s Latitude location-based service baked right in. Latitude was launched a long time ago and allows you to share your location in real-time with chosen friends. Thankfully, there are granular controls, so for each specific friend, you can choose the accuracy to which they can see your location. I have some close friends who get my exact coordinates, while most anyone else can simply see the city that I’m currently in.

Until Tuesday, Latitude simply let you ‘be’ at a place – there was no concept of checking-in or any of that. Tuesday’s update, though, not only added the ‘check-in’ functionality, but went a step further to let you automatically check-in to approved places, get notifications if you’re nearby a place to check-in, and the ability to automatically check you out of a location when you leave.

1. Notifications – This is the first thing that I can see Google exploiting with its ad service. The application can now pop up a notification if you’re near a place, to see if you want to check-in. They’re currently pushing this as a reminder service, but it won’t be long before you see sponsored notifications – alerting you to a certain special or coupon for a nearby business. There are definite pros and cons to this, but that’s another post for another day.

2. Automatic Check-Ins – this is quite cool if you’re one who gets annoyed by people walking into a business and immediately dropping their face to their phone to check-in and alert the world of their whereabouts. Wisely, Google made this an opt-in feature, and only for approved places (home, work, your regular bar, etc).

3. Automatic Check-Outs - This is my favorite part, and the one that’s the most relevant to the location-based services industry, in my opinion. It’s also the one that Google is likely hoping you’ll use the most. Basically, because Latitude tracks you real-time, it knows when you leave a location, as well, and can automatically check you out. This adds a relevant time-based layer to check-ins. With Foursquare, for instance, you might be able to see that I checked into Rahr Brewery an hour ago. You’re left to wonder if I’m still there, or if I’ve already left. With Google Latitude, my phone would automatically update that check-in with the information that I’ve left, providing more useful information.

Don’t be fooled, though – Google wants you to use this to get an additional valuable piece of information – how long you stay at places. Google would soon know (and could sell this information to advertisers) that while males age 25-30 in the Fort Worth area spend an average of 1.3 hours at the Rahr Brewery on Saturday afternoons. The amount of time you spend there is nearly as important to advertisers as the fact that you’re there in the first place is.

I’ve tested this out a bit, but am hesitant to really use it without having a better understanding of who is seeing what. Location is a very powerful tool, and can also be exploited quite quickly and easily. It’s clear that this isn’t the first (or the last) example of location-based services toeing the line between useful and an invasion of privacy. What do you think of this? Are you excited about the possibilities, or more concerned for your private details?

Huawei Ideos X5 Looks Sweet

// February 3rd, 2011 // 2 Comments » // android

If you’re in the U.S., you likely have no idea who Huawei is, much less how to pronounce it correctly. The company only recently started making inroads with the U.S. carriers, starting with USB aircards. More recently, though, they’ve began the expansion with a number of affordable Android-powered smartphones, such as the Comet, sold under the T-Mobile brand name. At $150 with no contract, the T-Mobile Comet is decently specced, too – tri-band 3G/quad-band GSM, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, Android v2.2, and even a 3 megapixel camera.

Huawei doesn’t seem content with such entry-level fare, though. The Ideos X5, shown off at CES 2011, sports high-end features found in most of today’s ‘superphones’. The phone packs a 3.8-inch capacitive touchscreen display, HSPA+ (what T-Mobile and AT&T call ’4G’), 4GB of internal storage, Android v2.2, and even a 5 megapixel camera with 720p HD video capture. Quite impressive for a company that only just hit the U.S. market. The phone is planned to launch in Singapore, Hong Kong, and New Zealand in January 2011, but should hit the U.S. market later this year. Even if this bad boy rings in for twice the price of its predecessor, that’s still $300 for a phone that packs quite a punch. You would easily spend $400+ for a similar phone on today’s market, such as the Samsung Galaxy S series or the Google Nexus One.

This isn’t an ad for Huawei, though – I wanted to highlight them for another reason. It appears as though the company is committed to building ‘pure’ Android devices – that is, running a vanilla version of Google’s Android operating system, with no manufacturer-built user interface on top. That’s a big deal for the Android developer community, as it typically means software updates to newer versions of Android will be quickly available. If Huawei sticks with this path, it could quickly become a crowd favorite in the Android community. Definitely a company to watch.

Fossil Is Rehashing The Connected Wristwatch

// January 9th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // cool, toys

Fossil has been around since 1984, specializing in clothing and accessories. They make some of the coolest wristwatches on the market, and they’re about to step up their game even more. They’ve recently announced their Connected Wristwatch line, a series of wristwatches that are able to connect to your phone via Bluetooth for various bits of information and notifications. Currently these watches are able to connect to Android-powered smartphones, as well as BlackBerries, which are two awesome platforms to start with. BlackBerry support gives Fossil’s Connected Wristwatches availability to the Enterprise market, while the Android platform is increasingly popular with consumers and ‘normobs’.

It appears as though Fossil will be releasing an entire lineup in the future, with a few different form factors to choose from. For starters, they’ll have watches that look like normal wristwatches, with the addition of small LCD screens that can show information somewhat like a stock ticker. I previously had a chance to check out one of Sony Ericsson’s Bluetooth wristwatches that behaved like this, and it’s a really handy extra, that’s for sure. Another one would see the entire face of the watch as a display, and you could obviously get more rich information from this – full weather forecasts, photo caller ID, email previews, etc. Quite handy for someone who is constantly on the go, as you could simply glance at your wrist to see what your phone is buzzing about – no need to fumble through your pockets.

The best part of these new Fossil watches is that they’re anticipating a $200 launch price – that’s nicely affordable, especially compared to the $400-500 that Sony Ericsson was asking for their earlier units. Fossil is also one of the pioneers of customizable fashion-oriented wristwatches. You can go to their store and pick out your watch face, then choose from a seemingly endless array of watch bands and other accessories to build your own unique watch.

I’ll most definitely be keeping an eye on this, and will hopefully be able to review one of these watches when they come available. In the meantime, Fossil spent some time with Robert Scoble, so you can check out the audio below for more on these cool watches.

This is another awesome example of technology enriching and enabling real life. By putting the information from your phone on your wrist, Fossil is converting quite a bit of data into glanceable information. The benefits here are endless, and because Fossil is behind it, these watches are sure to look great, as well.

Gmail For Android Updated With Intelligence

// December 9th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // android, communication, technology

Google has been on an updating spree, with new versions of several applications showing up in the Android market over the past few days. Today, however, was something completely different. The team updated the Gmail for Android application, adding a handful of new features that will likely increase productivity exponentially for most people. You can read the full announcement here, but there’s one thing that instantly stuck out to me: Priority Inbox Alerts.

Google introduced Priority Inbox for the desktop version of Gmail quite some time ago. The premise is rather simple – Google will look over various aspects of your emails, attempting to determine which ones are important, and which ones might not be as important. There is a filtered view available that shows all of your ‘important’ emails at the top – regardless of whether you’ve already read them or not. The idea is that Priority Inbox helps you get things done by automatically filtering out the distractions.

With Gmail for Android’s new update, they’ve taken Priority Inbox one step further by adding the option to only get notifications for ‘important’ emails. Now, Priority Inbox does take a little while to setup, but it’s completely worth it. With Priority Inbox alerts, your phone becomes smart enough to act like a personal assistant with your emails, only alerting you to the ones you really care about.

While this is only currently available with Gmail, let’s take another step and apply it to the rest of your phone’s features. Imagine your phone only rings for ‘important’ phone calls and only beeps when someone important IMs or texts you. Sure, you can manually set up groups and get a similar experience, but we’re talking automatic learning intelligence, here.

I’d also like to see this intelligence pay attention to other factors, such as time and date. An email from, say, my mom might not be all that important to me while I’m at work, but when I get home I’m likely to have time to read it and respond. Similarly, an email from my boss is of the utmost importance from 9a-5p, but I’d really rather not see it after I’ve left the office or on the weekends.

While it will likely be a few years before we see in-depth intelligence from our mobile devices, I’m certainly excited to see it arriving in bits and pieces today. What about you? Is letting your phone determine whether or not a notification is important a bit scary, or do you welcome the assistance?

LauncherPro Makes Android More Awesome

// December 3rd, 2010 // 2 Comments » // android

One of my all-time favorite Android applications is LauncherPro. It’s available for free on the market, or you can pony up $3 through Paypal for the Plus version, which gives you a few extra features, including some widgets that mimic the popular Sense ones. LauncherPro replaces your phone’s homescreen and main menu, and lets you customize nearly every aspect as you see fit. It runs right alongside your default launcher, which means you can install it, check it out, and if you don’t like it, just uninstall it – no harm done. You don’t need root access or anything fancy, either.

So, why do I love it so much? For starters, LauncherPro lets you customize the dock that sits at the bottom of your screen. Typically, the default docks on most Android phones – including ones with Stock Android, HTC Sense, or even Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface – have crappy selections for the dock – probably a phone link, a main menu button, and a browser button or settings one. Worthless. With LauncherPro, I can get five slots – I can use them all, or leave a few empty, if I wanted. What’s even better, though, is that I can also assign swipe gestures to each of those. With swipe gestures, LauncherPro turns 5 shortcuts into 10 – freakin awesome.

To help show you how this all works, I put together a quick video walkthrough of my current LauncherPro setup:

You can get more ideas on how to setup your LauncherPro on this thread at XDA, or you can head over to the LauncherPro forums.

T-Mobile G2: Like An N97 With Android

// November 15th, 2010 // 23 Comments » // android, Mobile

Back in July, I was desperately shopping for a replacement for my Nokia N97. I knew I wanted an Android-powered smartphone, but I also wanted a hardware keyboard and a dedicated camera button, and the phone had to support SIM cards. At the time, my only real option was to import a Motorola Milestone from Canada for use on AT&T’s network, or switch to T-Mobile for the MyTouch Slide. Neither of these offered me the speed of Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon processor.

At the time, I chose to go with an HTC Nexus One, and that’s been an awesome choice – I’ve had a ton of fun with the Nexus, and learned plenty about Android in general. Unfortunately, AT&T’s network hasn’t been as much fun. I’ve been an AT&T customer since 2000, when it was still SouthwesternBellWireless. Since then, I’ve seen my data speeds become disturbingly unreliable and voice calls drop like rain. So, when T-Mobile announced the HTC G2, along with their 4G network (yes I realize it’s not really 4G), I was definitely interested.

The HTC G2 has everything I originally wanted – a hardware QWERTY keyboard, dedicated camera button, and the power of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors. While I wasn’t totally convinced of T-Mobile’s network, I figured it couldn’t be worse than AT&T’s, so this weekend I took the plunge and switched Christina and me over. Christina took the MyTouch 4G, but I was focused on the G2.

After only a few days, it’s a mixed bag. The G2 is everything I expected it to be. Even underclocked to 800MHz, it’s lightning quick, and the keyboard and camera button already have me feeling at home again. Since HTC also offers the Desire Z – basically a G2 with Sense UI – it should be super easy to put HTC’s Sense UI on the G2, for the superior camera application.

The G2 is built well, with solid materials that feel high quality, rather than cheap plastic. The screen is awesome and easily read in sunlight, and the underclocked processor means I get a few extra hours out of the battery. The keyboard is a bit stiff, but totally awesome to have, with everything laid out nicely and plenty of extra shortcuts. In fact, I typed this entire post on the G2′s keyboard in about 30 minutes with no desktop editing afterwards.

T-Mobile’s network, thus far, is….different. On the one hand, I have worse 3G coverage than I did with AT&T. While at my parents’ house in Woodway, TX this weekend, I actually saw a G on my phone – signifying that I wasn’t even on EDGE, but GPRS. However, I’ve seen that T-Mobile’s network is more truthful and reliable than AT&T. When T-Mobile shows 3G, I actually get 3G speeds, whereas AT&T might show full 3G but only deliver GPRS speeds. Given the choice, I’d rather have an accurate representation of my signal.

Overall, though I had to dump ten years of loyalty to AT&T, I’m happy with the decision. AT&T has continued to release crappy lackluster Android phones, leaving me with no other option, since I don’t want to buy into their fruity ‘Jesus Phone’. With several phones on the US market and an increased focus on the camera experience of their smartphones, HTC is quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with in the mobile industry. If they keep building phones like the G2, they’ll keep me on board.

Disclaimer: I currently work at RadioShack, Inc., on their mobility team. However, I purchased my G2 with my own funds on my own personally-liable account.

Photo from Engadget

How To: Get The New Car Home On CyanogenMod v6

// October 1st, 2010 // No Comments » // android, Mobile

One thing with custom ROMs is that they can often make updating system apps somewhat troublesome. Such is the case for the new Car Home update that Google made available earlier today. You can read all about it here, but it basically adds features that we’ve all expected to have available in Car Home for a while. This includes the ability to edit the shortcuts, change the background, and even change the color of the icons.

If you don’t want to wait for an official workaround, you can do it yourself, provided you have purchased Root Explorer from the Android market (AppBrain link). First and foremost, make a nandroid backup, just in case you do something stupid accidentally.

Now, open Root Explorer and make sure that you’re in the highest directory, and then press menu, and choose ‘Search’. Type in ‘carhome’ and let Root Explorer search through your whole phone (it might take a minute or two). You should end up with about 8 results in various places. Go ahead and delete all of the files, except for the two that have the little green Android man next to them. These should both be ‘com.google.android.carhome.apk‘ and ‘com.google.android.carhome-launcher.apk‘. You’ll need to delete the first one individually.

Press the back button in Root Explorer and navigate to /system/app. Make sure you click the button at the top of your screen that changes Root Explorer to ‘R/W mode’  – now scroll down until you see the aforementioned ‘com.google.android.carhome.apk‘ and delete it. You can now exit Root Explorer and go ahead and reboot your phone.

If you accidentally delete the ‘com.google.android.carhome-launcher.apk’, don’t panic. You can extract this from the Gapps zip file that you used when you installed CyanogenMod v6. It’s in the /system/apps directory.

Once your phone reboots, you should be able search the Market for ‘Car Home’ (make sure you choose the Google one) and install easily.

Note: using Root Explorer is potentially dangerous – be very careful, especially when you’re in ‘R/W mode’, because you *could* potentially mess something up. If you do, don’t blame me, it’s your fault. However, assuming you followed my instructions, just restore the nandroid backup you made before you started and you should be good to go. I’m not responsible if you hose your phone.

Droid Doesn’t Do Video Streaming

// September 13th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // android

Since getting my Nexus One, I’ve been exploring various things I can do with the phone. Some, like music, are awesome experiences. Other experiences, like phontography, kinda suck. I’ve also noticed that video streaming – trying to enjoy video content streamed over either WiFi or cellular networks, is just as bad.

Sure, Android has a decent YouTube application baked right into the operating system. Unfortunately, it’s YouTube. The problem I have with YouTube is that it’s poorly managed. While that allows Google to skate around DMCA issues, it also results in a really messy site. Try searching for a music video by your favorite artist or other popular video clip. Odds are, you’ll get hundreds, if not thousands of results. Some of those results are quality copies, others might be edited (or ‘remixed’) by the uploader, might have alternative lyrics added, or will otherwise be a poor copy of the original.

Worse yet, YouTube is typically not the first choice of creative folks who are producing quality content. It’s more like the MySpace of video sharing sites – lots of junk videos by 16-year-olds who want to be video stars. YouTube also has this annoying practice of not making all their videos available through the mobile app – forcing you to choose between the app’s phone-friendly interface and the desktop site’s superior video selection.

The real quality stuff is usually found elsewhere, such as on Vimeo. Fortunately, Vimeo’s videos – including those in HD – play really well on my Nexus One. In fact, the overall experience, in my opinion, is much better than YouTube. Unfortunately, Vimeo’s ‘mobile’ site only gives access to the featured videos – if you want to browse through channels or groups or anything, you have to switch to the desktop site.

For those wondering about my aversion to ‘desktop’ sites on my phone, you can read more about why Consumers Don’t Want To Browse Desktop Websites On Their Phones.

There also seems to be a severe lack of video streaming applications for Android devices. Hulu Plus is only available on the iPhone at the moment, while the Netflix app is only on the iPad, for now. SPBtv is available, but only for off-the-wall channels – few that I’d want to watch. There’s a TV.com application, but most of its full episodes are only available over a WiFi connection – are you kidding me?

Browsing the Android market doesn’t seem to yield any independent developer making any waves, either. Surely Android is a good platform for something other than web browsing and music consumption, right? Have I missed something? Is there some super secret awesome video streaming or video playback app for my Nexus One that I’ve somehow missed out on? It’s not like Android-owners don’t have unlimited data – unless you’ve purchased an Android device from AT&T in the past month or two, in the U.S. at least, I know you have unlimited data – why can’t we use it?

Even for locally-stored videos, Brad Linder at ZatzNotFunny.com has done some explorations and only found two decent video players for the Android platform. You’ve got to be kidding me!

Droid Doesn’t Do Video Streaming

// September 13th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // android

Since getting my Nexus One, I’ve been exploring various things I can do with the phone. Some, like music, are awesome experiences. Other experiences, like phontography, kinda suck. I’ve also noticed that video streaming – trying to enjoy video content streamed over either WiFi or cellular networks, is just as bad.

Sure, Android has a decent YouTube application baked right into the operating system. Unfortunately, it’s YouTube. The problem I have with YouTube is that it’s poorly managed. While that allows Google to skate around DMCA issues, it also results in a really messy site. Try searching for a music video by your favorite artist or other popular video clip. Odds are, you’ll get hundreds, if not thousands of results. Some of those results are quality copies, others might be edited (or ‘remixed’) by the uploader, might have alternative lyrics added, or will otherwise be a poor copy of the original.

Worse yet, YouTube is typically not the first choice of creative folks who are producing quality content. It’s more like the MySpace of video sharing sites – lots of junk videos by 16-year-olds who want to be video stars. YouTube also has this annoying practice of not making all their videos available through the mobile app – forcing you to choose between the app’s phone-friendly interface and the desktop site’s superior video selection.

The real quality stuff is usually found elsewhere, such as on Vimeo. Fortunately, Vimeo’s videos – including those in HD – play really well on my Nexus One. In fact, the overall experience, in my opinion, is much better than YouTube. Unfortunately, Vimeo’s ‘mobile’ site only gives access to the featured videos – if you want to browse through channels or groups or anything, you have to switch to the desktop site.

For those wondering about my aversion to ‘desktop’ sites on my phone, you can read more about why Consumers Don’t Want To Browse Desktop Websites On Their Phones.

There also seems to be a severe lack of video streaming applications for Android devices. Hulu Plus is only available on the iPhone at the moment, while the Netflix app is only on the iPad, for now. SPBtv is available, but only for off-the-wall channels – few that I’d want to watch. There’s a TV.com application, but most of its full episodes are only available over a WiFi connection – are you kidding me?

Browsing the Android market doesn’t seem to yield any independent developer making any waves, either. Surely Android is a good platform for something other than web browsing and music consumption, right? Have I missed something? Is there some super secret awesome video streaming or video playback app for my Nexus One that I’ve somehow missed out on? It’s not like Android-owners don’t have unlimited data – unless you’ve purchased an Android device from AT&T in the past month or two, in the U.S. at least, I know you have unlimited data – why can’t we use it?

Even for locally-stored videos, Brad Linder at ZatzNotFunny.com has done some explorations and only found two decent video players for the Android platform. You’ve got to be kidding me!

What Will Be The First Computer-Free Generation?

// July 30th, 2010 // 28 Comments » // blogging, Mobile

Several years ago, I conducted an experiment on Symbian-Guru.com called PC-Free For 30 Days. My main computer had crashed and was going to be in service, so I decided to see how I could complete the tasks that I normally do on my computer using only a Symbian-powered smartphone. The conclusion at the time was that while it is possible, in most cases it wasn’t nearly as convenient to do things from my smartphone as it was to do the same task from a computer.

Fast forward to the present, and I’m honestly convinced that if I didn’t run a blog, I wouldn’t need a computer at all. In the past 6 months, I’ve used smartphones powered by Android, Symbian, and BlackBerry – some of the leading smartphone operating systems.

As I use these smartphone platforms more and more, I’m growing less and less dependent on my laptop for pretty much anything and more dependent on my smartphones to pick up the slack. Aside from the physical aspects (bigger screen, keyboard, etc) there’s really nothing my laptop offers me that my smartphone doesn’t. In fact, my smartphone has a few physical aspects that put it a step ahead my laptop.

1. Better battery life – sure, today’s netbooks can go several hours on a single charge, but the majority of laptops on the market today, barely eek out 2-3 hours of continuous use, much less 6-8. My smartphone – particularly the BlackBerry Bold 9700, can easily go through one, sometimes 2 full days of use before I have to charge it. Impressive.

2. Much more mobile – there’s a difference in mobility and portability. Mobility is the ability to use something while mobile – while moving. Portability is how easy it is to move something from place to place. Portability requires stops to really use something, while mobility doesn’t. My smartphone is a handheld object – I can use it with one hand easily. Even my netbook can’t do that.

3. Connectivity – my smartphone is connected via the cellular network all the time. I get notified of new updates this way, and I don’t have to hunt down a Wi-Fi hotspot to use it. I realize a few netbooks have this built-in now, but the vast majority do not come with this feature built-in.

As the younger generations grow up and get to high school, college, and beyond, how many will opt to have computers – even laptops and netbooks – versus just a smartphone? Even the most high-end smartphone is a few hundred dollars cheaper than the cheapest netbooks, and is just as capable. How many of the generations after them will opt for a full-on computer?

In fact, if I didn’t blog, I’d probably never open my laptop or netbook. Of course, there are WordPress apps for Symbian, BlackBerry, and Android, but it’s not really a great solution. What about you? Do you really need a computer, or have you started to depend more and more on your smartphone for everything? Are there any tasks that you simply need a computer to accomplish?