Tag: google

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Business business applications chromebook Cloud google mobile apps obsolescence storage backup & dr

Office365 – How Low Can You Go ?

It seems to me that a tipping point has arrived for businesses large and small, many of which after having drastically cut back on their IT spend over the last few years now find themselves coasting into 2014 on the fumes and vapours of Windows XP and Office 2003/7.

Andrew Beardsmore is a new contributor to trefor.net and this is his first post. He’s been obsessed by tech for two decades and has spent most of that time fixing everything from networks to netbooks. Now he’s sharing the knowledge, and the obsession.

I recently had a bit of a tweetup with @EvanKirstel regarding Microsoft’s amazing deal with Office365 (check it out at: https://twitter.com/andyosira/status/481463379383820288).

It seems to me that a tipping point has arrived for businesses large and small, many of which after having drastically cut back on their IT spend over the last few years now find themselves coasting into 2014 on the fumes and vapours of Windows XP and Office 2003/7.

Cloudy

Home users who extravagantly trotted off to Currys/PCWorld during their “hey, we’re going bust” sales and splurged on full versions of more recent MS Office software (though intending to only blow a few hundred quid on a chunky Windows 8 laptop) probably won’t have heard yet of Office365. They also may not have noticed those early ChromeBooks, or if they did they weren’t entirely convinced by the PCWorld sales folk when faced with what looked like Ubuntu. That is, Ubuntu without a hard drive…or apps.* Their new high capacity laptop hard drives, overflowing with growing photo libraries from flashy megamegapixel point-&-shoots, are already laughing at their puny free two gigabyte Dropbox accounts, and buying yet another discounted external USB hard drive ‘My Brick’ to backup and fill with all their pics and videos of school plays and homework projects, as well as every family member’s iPad/iPod/iPhone backup…well, it just seems so ‘2011’, doesn’t it?

Now these home users are included in this mini-cloud revolution also. (Not every household bought a NAS — though perhaps they should have — as they ARE expensive. Expensive, anyway, when compared to the wares peddled by Microsoft.)

In my opinion, the principles are broadly similar whether you are purchasing enterprise licensing or you are a home user “with a lot of stuff”.

  • Both need humongous space and/or backup and want a whizzy new version of Office.
  • Both want to be able to access it all whilst mobile (even if your mobile data provider hasn’t heard of your holiday home’s postcode, and thus offline editing is also needed).
  • Both want to share and collaborate.

With monthly offers that include an Office365 subscription (spanning multiple devices and user accounts) AND one terabyte of online storage now available for less than the cost of three lattes, just how cheap does it all need to be? And would you trust it if it got any cheaper ?

How does $7 a month sound? (In dollars because — Yup — stateside rollout first.) For this amount you can put Office365 on your PC and get a terabyte of storage thrown in. Make it $10 and you can install on five PCs and have as many as five user accounts (each with its own terabyte of online storage). A terabyte? That’s one thousand gigabytes for those of us with suntans and more interest in Wimbledon than “The IT Crowd” reruns.

Interestingly, Microsoft commissioned a recent survey and decided that about three quarters of us only have about thirteen gigabytes of ‘stuff’, so one thousand gigabytes should pretty much cover it. To be honest, though, this number sounds like it’s been picked more to justify their updated freemium offering of a fifteen gigabyte deal.

Many will forget about their Dropbox accounts, mothball their GoogleDrive accounts, lose the power supply plugs and mini USB cables for their ‘My Bricks’ (and never again dream of owning a NAS). They’ll take the plunge into subscriptions-based software purchasing** just for the great one terabyte ‘giveaway’ alone. Got a smartphone that you take pics on? How about letting it backup all those precious shots automatically to OneDrive (smile!).

Think about it. Never again will you need to go through a ‘fork-lift’ upgrade process between versions of Office — remember the advent of the blasted ribbon in Office 2007? — as your device will instead accept the more frequent but gradual improvements and changes in the same way your smartphone updates its apps whilst you sleep. It will backup and sync continuously, silently, all the time. If you’re a small to medium business, what this means is that the guy who takes the backup tapes home every night and puts a new one in every morning won’t have to continue to lie each time he forgets. Or you can rethink your price plan with MozyPro, or whoever. The AD-like control you get over the data it handles will sufficiently please both your sysadmin and your CIO/CISO.

Many will consider Microsoft’s new 1TB + Office365 $7 per month subscription a no-brainer. And, if you’re bulk buying for business, the deal gets even better, as according to the third link I offer below it is just $2.50 (yearly commitment). Such a huge saving is certain to ensure your continuing position with the company, that is if you can persuade your CFO. And if against all odds it turns out to be a rubbish idea and they fire you, well, they can just cancel your user subscription!

N.B. I wonder how many smaller partnerships and LLPs will be tempted to take the home licensing route on their mixed-usage mobile devices…pay the $10 five-user rate, out of guilt, and call it BYOD when it’s in the office?!

*Company-wide Chromebook deployment: Great way to to upgrade to a modern OS, get a new office productivity suite, AND equip your workforce with mobile devices for less than the price of a desktop refresh. I want to know more about the experiences of companies who have ‘gone Google’ in this manner. I like what I have seen so far with Google Appcare. However, having recently dropped their cloud offering’s pricing, I wonder how they feel about Microsoft’s new deal? To quote mine host, it’s “certainly warming up in the cloud wars”).

**Just quietly say ouch and forget it’s happening.

Chase the following links for specific details and price plans for Office365 and OneDrive:

https://blog.onedrive.com/new-onedrive-storage-plans/

http://time.com/25107/chart-cloud-storage-services-compared/

https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/plans/

Thanks for reading. You can find more on the subject of Office365 and similar tech at twitter.com/@andyosira.

Categories
Net

The Google Blinkers are Coming Off…

Despite my overwhelming obsession with broadband campaigning (which has now consumed nearly two decades of my life) I do actually have a real job, one which was the actual cause of me getting involved in broadband in the first place. As one of the first Internet marketers in the world, back in 1995 I was having major problems delivering the services my clients wanted. Not only was I on dial up costing per call (roll on FRIACO), but I also regularly had computers blown up by power surges because of my rural location. and today, little has changed — my productivity is still minimal compared to my capabilities, purely due to the poor quality of my connectivity. I worry less about my connection, though, as the electricity problem has been reduced with surge protectors, UPS, etc., though, and I also no longer want to work every day and night!

Back in ’97, I think, I finally decided to move my site off GeoCities and all the other freebie sites I had created a presence on, and instead get a domain and a single point of presence. One of the discussions in the industry at the time was the importance of having keywords in your domain name. Having had a quite a few clients by that point, though, I already realised that relying on search engines to generate traffic was not the be-all-and-end-all of Internet marketing, and I hated with a vengeance the term “Search engine optimist” and all variants thereof. In fact, just that TLA on its own could set me off. SEO? Pah, don’t you know about webrings, or fora, or bulletin boards, or IRC, or who you can find on ICQ, or how good some of the niche directories are, or.. or…or…

Google, when I began, wasn’t even a gleam in a garage, and there were multiple engines with different ranking algorithms and rules you had to try to satisfy to get decent listings across the many engines to get traffic. I registered WebPR, as I felt that it was all about being open with the public and building relationships. I’m still very happy with my domain, though I no longer use it to get work. (In fact, it is deliberately set up at present to avoid that pain!)

Continue reading “The Google Blinkers are Coming Off…”
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Business google

email Gmail Google+

Following on from my previous comments re emailing to Google+ connections not working it now is. I’ve just sent someone an email. I already had their email address but presumably not in that Gmail Contacts list. So Gmail offered to send the email to the person’s Google+ account. Just made it quicker for me.

I’m starting to use contact details from multiple social platforms now. Earlier this afternoon sent someone an email to an address they had in their LinkedIn profile.

What’s not to like?

Ciao

bebe

Categories
chromebook Engineer media video webrtc

Bandwidth use for Google Hangouts #WebRTC

Was on a WebRTC conference call this morning. I was calling from the Chrome browser in my Chromebook. Volume could have been slightly louder but the quality of the call was terrific. All I did was click on a link and hey presto. I’ll tell you more about it in due course.

We chatted for over half an hour. It wasn’t video as the other participants were using standard SIP phones. We were hooked up through a WebRTC gateway in the (good ole) US of A.

One on the subjects that came up was bandwidth use of video streams when making WebRTC calls. Using a gateway minimises the amount of processing that you have to do locally and also cuts down on the internet bandwidth you need.

Google Hangouts apparently use your laptop/local device to do the video mixing and thus you need more i/o bandwidth. Google tells us that for person to person video hangout the min bandwidth required is 256kbps/512kbps (up/down) and ideally for the best experience 1Mbps/2.5Mbps).

For calls with more than 2 persons the ideal scenario changes to 900kbps/2Mbps. This means that many people living with poor quality ADSL connections will not be able to properly experience the power of Google Hangouts.

It also explains why calls at weekends (that’s when we hangout) to my daughter at Durham University are also poor quality. It has been known for four of us kids to be on the hangout – one in Durham and three in separate rooms in the house in Lincoln (me and the two lads still at home).  We have 7Mbps up in our house but in Durham it is an ADSL connection shared between four in a student house.

Shame really. For the want of a few quid more on the broadband line it could be much better. Students however are always skint and conserve the cash and we should recognise that they are representative of many people in the UK.

With time everyone will be on a faster broadband connection but for the moment, and I know I’m quite likely to get noises of agreement (or maybe just the occasional assenting nod) from readers in rural areas, many still have to live with limitations of their internet connection.

Mind you I’m all right Jack:)

That’s all.

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Engineer internet ipv6

Nest Labs – tax benefits and the internet of things? #IPv6

Google has bought Nest Labs for $3.2Bn. Nest Labs is into smart home devices and the internet of things. This we all know because it’s splattered all over the tech pages this morning.

I’d never heard of Nest Labs. I suspect it’s a by product of living in sleepy old Lincoln, somewhere in the deepest sticks of Engerlund and not in Silicon Valley. I live with it every day and I love it.

Ok it is interesting news and it focusses the mind on the growth of the internet, the further pervasion of technology into our every day lives and yes, IPv6 even. Google knows its stuff when it comes to IPv6.

A few things particularly spring to my mind re this acquisition. One is that Nest Labs was founded with over $80m of VC money. If you want to sell your business for $3.2Bn you have to think big and place big bets. Nest Labs will have spent its cash on an expensive team of people able to deliver.

I saw somewhere recently that startup had offered a Google employee $500k to move jobs. Unfortunately that Google developer was already earning $3m! I wonder whether there is the environment in the UK for this kind of activity. It needs both investors and entrepreneurs to be fully embedded in emerging technology cultures.

Secondly if this market is going to be as big as the size of the bet suggests then it has to be the demesne of huge businesses. Global businesses. This is somewhat dispiriting. There must still be room for small entrepreneurial organisation who can make things happen quickly.

Finally one presumes that Google has a huge cash pile. You hear about it occasionally, usually when MPs whinge about the ways large multi-national corporations are able to avoid paying tax in particular countries. All perfectly legal.

A quick “Google” shows that US Corporation Tax is 40% whilst Capital Gains Tax is anything between zero and 15% or 20%. One of the investors in Nest Labs is Google Ventures, fair play. Now I’m not an accountant but might there be huge tax benefits for Google in only paying Capital Gains tax rather than Corporation Tax on the $3.2Bn? Don’t get me wrong. Nothing improper going on I’m sure. Perhaps it all comes out in the wash so to speak.

It would be interesting though if someone out there was able to drill into the taxation specifics of such a transaction. I’m sure it wouldn’t affect the Google business case for the Nest Labs acquisition but an interesting by product nevertheless?

Answers on a postcard or via the comments section.

See ya, buddy…

PS Internet of things. IPv6. Very exciting.

Categories
Business social networking

Profile information on people when adding to Google Contacts

I’ve added a couple of people to my Google Contacts list today based on being given their email addresses and mobile phone numbers. I’m impressed to see what other information on each person Google comes up with when you add them as a contact.

The info added by Google in Contacts must presumably be dependent on the person having made that available on their profile. However it is impressive – at a glance info on Twitter name, Facebook account etc.

Why wouldn’t you want to make this info available? If you manage different social media accounts differently you can do that either by keeping quiet about some or just restricting who can see what information through that platform’s own privacy settings.

Seem to me that this is a long way towards providing the functionality that the likes of Salesforce.com tout as key selling features for their own platforms, but on a free of charge basis.

I will be reviewing my own profiles and settings for my various social media accounts. Very mildly disappointed that the Gmail changes referred to herein still don’t seem to have kicked in yet. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. Oh I don’t know…

Categories
Business online safety security spam

Gmail update – Google+ comment

gmail_updateGot an email yesterday from Google about a change to Gmail. Everyone probably got the same mail. Certainly the mainstream media made big news of it, in the tech sections. When you are sending an email from a gmail account you will now be offered Google+ account holders as recipients of the mail.

One site, whose name is oft misspelled, even published a post on how to change your settings to stop people from being able to contact you via Google+. This would appear to me to be a blatant sop to search engine rankings – a big part of the email I got was all about explaining exactly this so the repetition of this info seemed particularly unnecessary. Whoever gets news out first attracts the visitors so it’s dog eat dog out there in the www.

Anyway “starting this week, when you’re composing a new email, Gmail will suggest your Google+ connections as recipients, even if you haven’t exchanged email addresses yet. Your email address isn’t visible to your Google+ connections until you send them an email, and their email addresses are not visible to you until they respond.”

I’ve tried but I can’t seem to get it to work. I guess “this week” must mean “next week” or at least from Monday onwards.

If someone from outside your Google+ Circles emails you then the mail gets filtered into the “Social” tab in your inbox. In my case this means it is unlikely to get read because I never look in that tab. I don’t look in the “promotions” tab either unless I’m expecting a particular mail – eg a password reset.

The tone of the online commentary about this “feature” is in the vein of “Google trying to increase/stimulate Google+ usage” and also all about privacy.

In my mind this is a very useful feature. I want people to be able to get hold of me. The principle is no different to your telephone number. Unless you want to be ex-directory anyone can look up your number. Of course there is the concern about spam but Google has a fantastic antic-spam engine and if it turns out to be “legitimate” spam from a business then this gets filtered into the “promotions” tab as previously mentioned. You can also label a sender as being a spammer which I frequently do if the email addresses me as “Hi”.

So all in all I think this is good. Except as I mentioned it doesn’t seem to work for me! That’s all folks.

Categories
Business online safety spam

Google blocking Microsoft Office365 mail as spam

I note from Twitter this morning that Google is blocking some emails from Microsoft Office365  to Gmail recipients as spam.

The message reads: [157.56.116.103 1] Our system has detected an unusual rate of unsolicited mail originating from your IP address 

I note also that the ip address is ascribed to AS8075 (ours is AS8607  fwiw – pretty contemporary) otherwise known as Microsoft Corporation. This address has been identified in the past as a source of spam – check out Project Honeypot. That link also displays some example mail messages that are clearly spam – “loans available”, “Attention ATM card beneficiary” and so on.

I sense a wry smile as you read this. Global commercial internet wars! “Google tries to shut down Microsoft email”. I suspect though that there will be no malice aforethought here. Managing mail platforms is a 24×7 job. As an email service provider you can’t afford for your server IP addresses to be blacklisted because of some customer generating spam. It might not even be that customer’s fault. It’s almost certainly an infected PC.

spam attacksMicrosoft will have a huge team of people managing their email platform. That spam was identified is also a testament to the Google anti spam capability which is widely considered to be the best in the game.

The pic inset is an old screenshot depicting incoming spam attacks – the legitimate mail has had to be amplified x10 so that you can actually see it. Fortunately the vast majority of the spam never makes it to the desktop.

IP addresses blacklisted as a source of spam don’t usually stay on the blacklist for very long – 24 hours maybe but it can certainly be a nuisance for those trying to send or waiting to receive emails.

I don’t think email has a long term future in any case or at least it is going to have niche applications (spam etc :)), but lets not get into a lengthy debate.

Ciao

Categories
Apps End User gadgets media

Chromecast – a second review

chromecast setupHaving read Terry Hughes’ Chromecast review I eventually got round to rushing out (metaphorically) and buying one from Amazon. It was forty two quid or so ($35 in the USA) but the cheaper ones involved longer shipping from the States or an additional postage charge so ripped up the budget and clicked.

The Chromecast is now installed and in use. I have some observations:

  1. You have to actually physically switch on the Chromecast dongle – it doesn’t just power up in the “on” state
  2. Installation from Chromebook didn’t work. I don’t know why. I moved on to do it from the S4.
  3. Installation from my Android was very simple. I guess this is it’s core use market/scenario (if that’s the right phrase)chromecast ready
  4. The dongle sits nicely and unobtrusively at the back of the TV and is powered by the USB port of the TV (didn’t realise I had one but now I do – phew – Anne would have complained if there was another dangling cable)
  5. It is very easy to use. In my case I just selected HDMI2 input and hey presto…
  6. It is also easy to “cast” content onto the TV from your phone – there is a small icon to select inside the app view.
  7. Now this is where it starts to get interesting. You can use Chromecast to stream movies, music, YouTube and Netflix. I only use YouTube to store the occasional vid for use in embedding in this blog – as in this post for example. I have no interest whatsoever in Netflix content – though many others must be as it takes up a significant chunk of ISP bandwidth. I have no movies to stream (and rarely watch them anyway – 90mins?!) and all my music is on my phone.
  8. chromecast musicThe latter point is definitely interesting. This is all about driving traffic into the cloud. In moving operations to Google Apps, Chromebook and cloud storage I began the process of shifting my music to Google Music (or whatever it’s called) but I stopped for some reason. I think it might have been because it involved entering my credit card details. Obviously Google wants to make it easy for me to buy more music.
  9. Currently any music I buy is in CD format and I then upload it to my phone. In my new cloudy ecosystem I may have to rethink this. Although I like having a CD in its case to touch and feel this might be because I’ve grown up with that experience. My kids think nothing of buying music from iTunes and never having a “hard copy”.
  10. Chromecast is likely to change my habits here. I had already been thinking of buying a surround sound system for the TV room and this may top the balance in its favour.
  11. I will also say that I was astonished at the quality of HD streaming on our TV. Although the TV is HD “ready” we have never had an input source to supply the HD – no Blueray, no Sky, no Virgin etc. The HD footage I took with my Samsung Galaxy S4 – this ride on Stephenson’s Rocket for example, was really good quality full screen 1080p on our 42″ box (flat panel).
  12. It was also very easy for multiple users to take advantage of the Chromecast. One of the kids came home from a music rehearsal and had downloaded the App and got it working in seconds. The kids are much bigger users of YouTube than I and he was streaming jazz videos in no time, (until his mum wanted to watch the news).

In conclusion – Chromecast – very easy to set up and use, obviously aimed at delivering content from the cloud, and could well move my music listening to streaming from that cloud. It’s all driving bandwidth use. Onwards and upwards.

I note Phil’s comment re waste of space. It does need to support more apps. I didn’t try seeing if I could surf using it but I suspect not – it would have been more in my face. Rewind – just noticed this icon in Chrome – not tested it but looks positive.

Update on casting from Chrome browser here.

chromecast in browser
Update 17th March Google Chromecast to become available in the UK – leading to lots of visitors to reviews on this site

Categories
End User phones

Comparison of Samsung Galaxy S4 with Google Nexus5 phones – speed

nexus5 & galaxys4It’s handy working at Timico because people are always buying new gadgets to have a play with.  Jared from IT has just got himself a Google Nexus5 and we thought it would be a good idea to make some comparisons with my Samsung Galaxy S4.

The first thing I noticed about the Nexus5 was that it has a much nicer feel to it in the hand than the S4. S4 is shiny and slippery. The Nexus5 is more matt and doesn’t feel like it will drop out of your hand too easily which is a good thing when you take a look at the battered nature of my not so old S4.

We did a couple of experiments. This first video shows both Nexus5 and Galaxy S4 being switched on simultaneously. The S4 looks as if it is booting up faster but the Nexus5 comes up with the lock screen several seconds ahead of the Samsung. Not scientific but a good peformance indicator I think. In defence of the S4 it will also have a lot more applications loaded but I’m not sure how much affect that will have on the startup time.

The second vid shows a photo being transferred from the Nexus5 to the Galaxy S4. Android to Android but from different models/manufacturers. It is impressive. The file is 3.5MB.

For those of you who are interested here is a side by side picture taken with each camera:

galaxys4shoes nexus5shoes
And finally a video out take – click here (fwi really is w).

Categories
End User gadgets

Google Chromecast has arrived at the Davies household in the UK

google chromecastI was so impressed with Terry Hughes’ review of the Google Chromecast that I decided I should get one meself. It arrived yesterday and I’ll be plugging it in later today.

I’m not much of a TV watcher but we’ll see how we get on. Let’s hope there are no cookery, DIY, self build etc programmes on to compete with the TV slot – we only have one TV which I know will seem strange to many of you.

Stay tuned 🙂

Categories
End User phones

Google Nexus5 lead times stretching out

Thought it worth mentioning that one of our IT guys, Jared,  has just ordered a Google Nexus5 handset. He’s been given a 4 week lead time. Should just about get it in time for Christmas, by which time, at the rate of new product introductions in this game, it will no longer be the latest and greatest.

I think we need to figure out a crowd sourced way of rating new handsets – as opposed to reading the boring reviews of professional journos who really just compare specs. It’s got to be about personal experience. Why one phone is easier to use than another.

I’ll give it some thought but comments welcome. In the meantime Jared must exercise patience – he currently has a BlackBerry.

Categories
End User phones

Initial review of Google Nexus5

Hugo Pickering has been good enough to let us have his thoughts on the Google Nexus5. He did so in a comment on my unreview of the device but it is very much worth a post of its own so here it is. Thanks for the feedback Hugo:)

Hugo writes:

The N5 finally arrived after the Parcelforce driver failed to read the note on the garden gate telling him to walk through to my office, entailing a trip yesterday to pick it up from the post office in Chipping Norton. Setup and transfer of all apps and data was very easy, once I had taken advice from Adrian Wooster and used the excellent app SMS Backup+, which does exactly as it says on the tin.

The familiar Android interface hasn’t changed dramatically in KitKat, but I might have preferred more icons on screen at once with a bigger screen, rather than bigger icons than before. The screen itself is fantastic, with greater colour depth and clarity – photos look sharper and the detail is stunning. The camera is a huge improvement, with much better low light shooting capability. Auto Awesome looks good, enhancing photos as you go, and then backing them up to Google+.

I’m still not sure about Hangouts hijacking SMS so that all texts have to go through it, which seems a bit draconian, but understandable as it makes everything easier to backup for future migrations. I may experiment with some SMS apps to see if anything else works better, as I guess developers will want to cash in on this.

A few apps seem to struggle with KitKat, notably Movember (yes I am going hirsute for the month –http://mobro.co/hugopickering), which seems to be an issue accessing the camera or gallery – maybe the app needs updating. Those apps that have been updated and optimised for KitKat work really well, such as Ookla’s Speedtest – a hugely improved interface and UX.

Speed is another big overall improvement, with apps loading faster and swapping between them with no lag. Hardware-wise, the phone is taller than the previous model, but the same width and thickness. The change to a rubberised back is very welcome and will help to reduce breakages of the old N4 Gorilla Glass back. The phone quality is excellent and the internal speaker seems louder than most phones which is great.

So overall I’m pretty pleased. Now to sell the old N4 on eBay – anyone?

Categories
End User phones

The Google Nexus5 unreview

social network sharing on the trefor.net blogThe Google Nexus5 took me a bit by surprise. I don’t anally watch the space and nobody mentioned it when I visited Google in London on Wednesday. Maybe it caught them by surprise too.

It’s getting to the point where the devices are coming too thick and fast to review them all, notwithstanding the fact that unless you are a favoured globally read media star who gets a freebie (coming clean here, I’m not) it gets to be an expensive thing to do, changing your phone every few months.

Anyway I don’t need to have a physical Nexus5 device to do a review. I can tell without even looking. It will have a few software and hardware improvements on its predecessor. I happen to know it’s a bit cheaper as well, which is good and a sign of the way forward – the point is coming where it’s difficult to add any new sexy features because they have already all been implemented (the “beam me up Scotty”  teleporter app being the exception here. That one is still at the artist impression stage although it is the ultimate app.

Having said that if anyone has a Nexus5 and wants to  do a review then feel free to drop me a line. Also I just took a look and this month amazingly trefor.net has readers from 147 countries though the majority are in blighty. Check out the whole list here > Readership distribution of blog.

PS the pic is a random image selected from my library of uploads. I’m clearly feeling bullish 🙂

Ciao baby.

Categories
Apps Cloud End User gadgets media

Google #Chromecast in the UK – review 5 days in #YouTube

Terry Hughes has just got himself a Google Chromecast dongle. In Google’s own words “With Chromecast, you can easily enjoy your favorite online entertainment on your HDTV—movies, TV shows, music, and more from Netflix, YouTube, Hulu Plus, Google Play Movies and Music, and Chrome.” Must have been Google’s spiel because I wouldn’t spell favourite like that.

Anyway I spotted on Facebook that Terry had gotten (just pulling your leg) a Chromecast and he agreed to do a review for the blog. Not being much of a TV buff myself it’s the only way it was gonna happen (there I go again) in the near term.

Here is what Terry has to say on the device:

Google ChromecastI’ve used various media steaming devices for several years, Apple TV, Android MK802, etc, all with various results. Today, I am a UK owner of a Google Chromecast device, purchased from Amazon.com, as one of a limited number of purchasers who got it for £34 including shipping and handling. This a quick review, considering I have only owned it for 5 days.

This device is a $35 streaming dongle that plugs into your TV’s HDMI port. You can use it to stream online videos from YouTube, Netflix, and Chrome browser, and use your tablet, mobile phone, or computer, as a remote control. (PC or MAC)

If you use your phone to start it off (Samsung Galaxy S4 in my case) it doesn’t stream videos directly to your Chromecast dongle. Instead, it just tells the device which video it should stream from the cloud. That means that you can use your phone for something else, once the stream starts. I even rebooted my phone whilst streaming to test this.

Simple Setup

It really is as simple as plugging in the device into a spare HDMI socket, and connecting power via the supplied adaptor, or from a TV USB port if you have one.

Now Google doesn’t currently allow Chromecast in the UK Play store (October 2013), so I had to get it via other means to setup the initial way in which the Chromecast device know about your router details. I expect this to change quickly during the next Google Event at the end of the month.

Once plugged in, enter the password of your local Wi-Fi network, and you’re all set to run. The device has Wi-Fi built in and doesn’t need Wi-Fi on your TV.

Streaming YouTube

My main use for Chromecast right now is YouTube, and I have now streamed my fair share of videos from that site in the last few days. Overall, streaming worked really well, simply by clicking an icon that appears in the YouTube menu, and choosing where to stream too. Why Choose? Well, you could actually have multiple Chromecast devices in each room. I don’t as yet 😉 I have now successfully got this to work from the above phone, Nexus 7 Tablet, and Asus notebook, all with wireless connection to the same router.

What other Apps work?

In total (so far) I have managed to get working:

Google Play for movies and music

Netflix

Chrome browser (with extension) for desktop and video playback (mp4, m4v, avi and mpeg)

BBC Iplayer via Chrome browser

What do I think?

I love it! After using Miracast, long HDMI cables, small PC under the TV and more, it’s now my main device for streaming YouTube, Netflix and more in High definition, with good sound and obvious lip-sync for movies.

FOR

Streams Android to a big TV

Works with MAC, PC’s, Tablets

Easy to setup and transport

Cheapest media adapter

 

AGAINST

Early days, so limited apps (Pandora, Hulu Plus, and HBO Go are all expected to be next )

Mirroring limited to browser tab

Windows Phone not supported

Chrome is the only supported browser

Can’t store files directly on the device.

THE END

Thanks Terry – I owe you a beer

Footnote – this post is getting quite a bit of interest. Google Chromecast seems to be available to buy in the UK at Amazon.

If this review was useful you should also check out these other Chromecast reviews on this blog here and here.

Update 17th March 2014 – Google Chromecast to become available in the UK – leading to lots of visitors to reviews on this site.

Categories
4g Business chromebook mobile connectivity

54 minutes 315 Megabytes 4G conference call using Google+ Hangout

sweyn hunterGoogle Hangout for 54 minutes using Samsung Chromebook and EE4G Huaweii MiFi clocks up 315Megabytes.

Just had a very pleasant 54 minutes video call with Sweyn Hunter using Google+ Hangout. My Huaweii 4G MiFi (courtesy of EE) tells me that it used approximately 315MB of bandwidth – probably slightly less as I did some emails before hand.

At Sweyn’s end he had “good old fashioned BT ADSL” with maybe 512k uplink speed. He lives in Orkney. The video quality was great though it did freeze two or three times in the 54 minutes. The only slight issue was an element of half duplex/one way speech in that if he was speaking and I tried to speak at the same time. I quickly got used to that and it didn’t detract  from the quality of the conversation.

Also 54 minutes was a long hangout for what was just a casual chat – I’ve never met Sweyn but converse with him from time to time on Twitter – @sweynh – I’m sure he won’t mind me telling everyone. The point being that if we were comfortable having a 54 minute video conversation the quality must have been good – otherwise we would have cut it short.

Sweyn is an interesting bloke I’m sure he won’t mind me saying – you should follow him. He is organising an Island Govcamp in Orkney next year on 6th and 7th September.

Might try a hangout using O2 and Vodafone sims in my various phones next time. It will be interesting to see if personal video calling is going to at last get mainstream with 4G. Bandwidth cost is still going to be an issue. You can work out for yourselves how quickly you will eat up your own data bundle.

Categories
Business chromebook Cloud

Samsung Chromebook test #3 – writing presentations

samsung chromebookIs the Samsung Chromebook any good for creating presentations? I’m about to find out. I have one to finish and am now off out to London for a couple of days – IPExpo and a dinner in Westminster ce soir. I also have to finish a presentation I’m doing next week on behalf of NewNet so it needs to be done whilst travelling.

I have my old Dell laptop out but the weight difference between it and the Chromebook is making it a no brainer. The Dell stays at home. I guess it is possible to buy thin, light laptops but not at £229.

I’ve moved the original presentation, started using Microsoft, onto my Drive. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Categories
Engineer internet ipv6

IPv6 traffic hits 2% of traffic at Google

IPv6 came up in conversation over lunch this week. Google reports that up to 2% of traffic to its servers are IPv6. It took about 4 1/2 years for IPv6 to hit 1% which it did around February of this year and I guess another 7 months or so to then double (timeframes are imprecise because I’m interpreting a graph rather than looking at the numbers behind it).

Traffic to Google isn’t necessarily representative of what is going on generally on the internet and I’m not sure there is one single source of data on this subject. However you can look at specific internet exchanges to see the trend on their own networks.

DE-CIX in Germany is the world’s largest internet exchange (IX) and a peek at the statistics on their website show a growth trend. As of today, 29/9/12 the 2 day average IPv6 traffic at DE-CIX is at 6.7Gbps which compared with the overall traffic level of 1,430Gbps is still a relatively small proportion.

Anecdotally different ISPs are at different stages of the game with IPv6 with some having to look at Carrier Grade NAT as an interim solution. Equipment aside the main issue is often the fact that automated provisioning and back office systems need redesigning to make IPv6 a scalable proposition. Whilst IANA stocks of IPv6 ahem IPv4 addresses are exhausted this is not necessarily the case within individual ISPs which is perhaps why we aren’t hearing more scare stories in the media.

Check out this paper on IPv6 readiness written back in 2010.

Chart below is the Google IPv6 traffic growth – links to Google’s own page.

Google IPv6 traffic stats

Categories
Apps Business Cloud mobile apps storage backup & dr

When automatic backups work

bread_smallI’ve been having some problems with the “Gallery” app on my Samsung Galaxy S4. Actually I wasn’t sure whether it was the app or the hardware that was giving me the problem. Sometimes a photo would come out as a 1GB file (ish) and sometimes when copying files from the phone to the PC the process would stall and I’d get “file format not recognised” or some simlar message.

The problem happened to me again last week and it prompted me to change the SD card to rule out that as the cause. In the process of doing so I lost a few photos I had taken that morning. Not a big deal really though this problem did result in the loss of some photos and videos I took of the kids on the first day of the Ashes series at Trent Bridge so it was something worth sorting out.

Yesterday we had a family day out at Skegness and last night I noted that the pics I had taken had been automatically uploaded to Google+. Cool. I went on Google+ to share the photos with the wider family. To my very pleasant surprise the photos I’d taken the other morning but had lost were on Google+.

That’s what I call a result.  The loaf of bread, if you’re wondering, is one of the lost photos. It was baked by my very talented wife Anne and didn’t last very long at all:).

Note that the instant upload function on Google+ works far better since I got my fast FTTC connection. The upload is the difference. I don’t know whether that photo would have uploaded quickly enough with my old ADSL connection.

Categories
Business fun stuff ofcom

Smart SEO makes a difference – NewNet wholesale comms provider

Web presence makes a huge difference to your business these days. You need to be on the front page of Google search rankings or you ain’t on the web.

I’m not saying we are up there for every search term we would like – that’s work in progress. However NewNet, our wholesale business is very much getting it right.

Check out the two screenshots below. The first is the top of the page showing the results for the “wholesale comms provider” search term. NewNet comes top for both paid for and organic. The other organic results on that page are mostly BT and then Ofcom. The second just shows you the rest of the screen. Nice.

google rankings wholesale comms provider

wholesale2

 

Categories
Engineer webrtc

ITSPA WebRTC workshop at Google Campus

itspa logoChaired the ITSPA WebRTC workshop at Google Campus yesterday. It had a great turnout so there is obviously an appetite to find out a bit more about WebRTC.

I’ve written about WebRTC several times before including here. The workshop comprised of presentations about the technology from Rob Pickering of IPCortex and Peter Dunkley of Crocodile Rich Communications Systems (they need an acronym methinks 🙂 ) followed by some demos (IPCortex, Crocodile and Drum).

In one sense these  demos are not very interesting. They are just showing video calling – no different to skype or google talk et al. The biggest difference is that with WebRTC the “client” is embedded in the web page that you are visiting. No need to download anything to run on your PC or phone. In theory therefore WebRTC could make for far more ubiquitous online real time communications.

WebRTC should facilitate communities of interest. For example if I have a WebRTC service in this blog then it would be easy to set up conference calls and discussions around specific posts – a big enhancement on the current commenting system. It should even be possible to record such discussions and embed them for others to listen to later.

You always hear about the next big thing that is going to kill off the good (?) old fashioned PSTN and WebRTC was mentioned as a contributor to this yesterday. The PSTN is eventually going to die but not for a long time yet. The WebRTC model, like the original Skype is not about minutes.

In any case, the PSTN is slowly moving away from a minutes based model to a fixed price all you can eat one which makes the death or otherwise of the PSTN a moot point.

WebRTC is potentially very interesting though but there is still a lot of work to be done. The standards are far from complete, even to the point of discussion as to which video codec to use. Half the industry wants to use H264 which is an existing and well bedded in codec. Unfortunately this half is also the half that owns all the patents for H264.

The other half supports Google’s push to use its own VP8 codec which it is making available royalty free.  Of course the H264 camp doesn’t like this and Nokia has apparently said that it owns some codecs that are applicable to VP8 in an attempt to stop it being “free”. You could take the view that Nokia won’t be around for much longer but you can’t base the codec decision on that and in any event someone would probably maintain ownership the patents.

For the moment most of us will have to get on making real money with existing products. SIP trunk anyone?

Categories
End User security

Privacy on London Underground Metropolitan Line #googleglass

hfobd_trust_thumbThe Metropolitan Line on London Underground has nice newish interconnected carriages and you can walk from one end of the train to the other. As we wound our way to Kings Cross for me to catch the train back north I noticed that the carriages were making interesting snake like movements. Very artistic I thought. I’ll video it.

I whipped out my S3 and propping against an upright for some semblance of stability I started recording (action – roll). I do this sort of thing. The first thing that happened was that a girl in the carriage noticed what I was doing and lifted her newspaper up to cover her face. That made me think.

There are obvious privacy issues in doing this although we were in a public place. However if I was wearing Google Glass I would be able to do it without anyone noticing. What is the implication of this? It really means the total end to privacy and anonymity in public places. That girl would not have noticed that I was recording.

I’m not sure there is anything that can be done about it. Maybe some sort of device that blocks other electronic devices from being able to video the space around you. There would have to be a standard for it. Maybe Bluetooth based. Not an easy thing to implement and it would only catch accidental video recording. If someone was hell bent on recording you they would obviously just disable that blocking function. I can imagine videos where lots of people had blurred out faces based on the fact that they have been transmitting blocking signals.

Makes you think dunnit?

Categories
Engineer internet ofcom social networking

The speed of obsolescence & the increase in the speed of light

pirate_flag_thumbWe do live in very interesting times. Last night the twitter stream told me that the internet in Syria had stopped working, or at least the traffic in and out of the country had died off which is the same thing. This morning it was included by the Guardian in their Boot Up links. I thought to myself last night that once it had hit twitter the news would be everywhere. I saw a couple more references to it on twitter this morning and thought to myself “they’re a bit behind the game – that was last night’s news”. I figured it was too old and publicly available to write a blog about it & I wouldn’t really have been able to add anything anyway.

Then this morning I saw someone retweet a link to a post by @TheRealRevK about how Ofcom was about to screw the voip market in the UK by, amongst other things (in it’s 500 page consultation). If you know Adrian (the reverend himself) you will know how passionate he is about these things.  I had thought about writing a post about this subject myself – it came up at dinner last week at Convergence Summit North. I didn’t have the time as I was out of the office for much of the week. I’m not going to do one now as I can’t add to Adrian’s post.

The world is changing so quickly. It’s daft that I don’t feel able to write about something that hit the headlines only a few hours ago and it certainly makes you think about what you do write. Google has been giving this a lot of thought with its Google Authorship Ranking (Google it). When I did the pigeon v rural broadband race a couple of years ago it was covered by the BBC and as far as  I could see scraped by approx 32,000 websites around the world. That’s them taking someone else’s news in the hope that it would make their own site interesting.

Google Authorship is designed to give credit to the originator of the news. I’ve added links to my Google+ profile from both trefor.net and philosopherontap.com and linked back from the profile to the sites. In theory over time my Google+ profile will be linked to my many sites as I write guest posts for them (ok maybe it won’t) and this will increase the level of credibility given to me as an author and originator of content.

This doesn’t take away the fact that I will still have to find original stuff to write about which ain’t necessarily easy in this world where the speed of light and information distribution is constantly increasing – you heard it first on trefor.net.

PS the speed of light bit is entirely made up as an attention grabbing bit of sensationalism – had I not made this admission I know many of you would otherwise take it as read from such a creditable source! 🙂

Categories
Apps Business media video

Google+ Hangout live stream broadcasts – wowsers

You will have been staying with your auntie on another planet if you are a regular visitor to this blog and not have noticed that I’m having a book launch on May8th (see here for details). I’ve been spamming my social media channels about it (sorry to those followers that remain 🙂 ) and I’m expecting a packed house.

Recognising that most people in the world won’t be able to come as all flights and hotels will be full (etc) together with the fact that the Morning Star will only take 100 people at a push I thought I’d stream the gig live online.

Up until recently I had intended to do this using babuser.com, that being the only streaming facility I’ve used. However I was pointed in the direction of Google+ Hangout Live Stream broadcasts and boy oh boy is that a cool service.

Your Google+ account is linked to your YouTube account and at the click of a button your hangout is streamed live both in your Google+ stream and YouTube. What’s more you can embed the stream in your own website and Google records the broadcast for reuse afterwards. You can thereafter chose to make it public or private.

The beauty of this is the level of engagement you can achieve on the various social media sites – comments/discussions and shares can abound. I looked at it for my book launch but clearly this is something that businesses can use that takes a Webex style presentation session to a more powerful and public level.

You can watch my efforts in the video embedded below. It is only me playing about and the fact that I had two laptops open side by side means lots of echoey feedback. The lighting isn’t great either so the audio and the quality of the video is something you need to work on.

The nice thing about the Google setup is that you can invite several friends to participate using their phones and at anytime select their video feed to be the main one in the broadcast. You have the basic setup for a professional studio or outside broadcast, albeit a simple one. The only shame is that the Android app doesn’t have the buttons for setting up the broadcast from a handset. You seem to need to use the desktop version.

I’m going to need a volunteer or two for next Wednesday and will be testing this on site over the Bank Holiday weekend. Lemme know if you want to hook up in a hangout. I’m [email protected]. Ciao baby.

Categories
Engineer webrtc

Web RTC workshop – get yer tickets ere

googlecampusIf you work in the Unified Communications industry you need to know about Web RTC. You can either Google it or come along to ITSPA’s Web RTC workshop at the Google Campus on 14th May to find out more.

This workshop is intended to provide a fairly detailed drill down into the workings of WebRTC and is suitable for the VoIP tech community. It includes an introduction to the technology and presentations and demos from a number of companies involved in the area. We will also be having a few beers afterwards, natch.

These events are seriously worthwhile attending. More details below – the event is open to non ITSPA members so git on down.

Tuesday, 14th May 2013, 14:00-17:30
Google Campus, 3rd Floor
4-5 Bonhill Street, EC2A 4BX London

Part 1: Technical background and introduction
Presentation from John Parr (Crocodile Rich Communications Systems) and Rob Pickering (IPCortex)

Part 2: Demos and real-life implementation: products, services, and more
Speakers TBC – Google, Drum, IPCortex, Crocodile Rich Communications Systems, Voxhub

Part 3: Roundtable discussion/panel and audience Q&A
Discussion moderated by Trefor Davies on the impact of WebRTC:
What are the challenges, opportunities, and threats – to software phones, video market, fixed infrastructure and more?

Reserve tickets here: http://itspawebrtc.eventbrite.co.uk/

Categories
Business Cloud virtualisation

The Psychological Challenge of the Cloud

Big platforms such as Google (Drive), Apple (iCloud) and latterly Microsoft (SkyDrive) are driving customers towards cloud services. The move to use these resources is almost certainly inevitable, for the consumer. The constraints are largely down to cost and privacy concerns. For the business user replace the word “privacy” with “security”.

I buy into the future. I have almost universal connectivity, at a price. I also have a growing amount of data being stored on my laptop. My data is currently backed up to two external hard drives, one at home and one in the office. The time is fast approaching where the laptop will run out of hard drive space. It is only a year old so I’m not going to replace it just to get a bigger hard drive.

It’s getting close to decision time on a cloud based strategy.

Continue reading “The Psychological Challenge of the Cloud”
Categories
End User phones

A stroll through the Lincolnshire countryside with Nokia Lumia 920 and Samsung Galaxy S3

Drive Carefully Sign at North GreetwellI’m just doing a lot of work with Microsoft Windows 8 at the moment and am running it on the desktop and on the Nokia Lumia 920. It is taking me a while to get into the OS but it is going to be on the menu on trefor.net for the next few weeks.

I am also going to be comparing Windows8 with the Google ecosystem – Chrome and Android. This isn’t one big post or article. It’s a series of bite sized chunks discussing specific aspects. I think this whole subject area is important because I see the business customer base polarising between the two. It might take some time for this to be totally apparent but it is happening.

It’s a cloud versus mobility versus desktop play. Whoever gets the mix right will take the top spot and by definition, money. Apple isn’t in this business centric game other than a boutique player.

Nokia Lumia 920 mapsgoogle maps on Samsung Galaxy S3In playing with Windows Phone 8 (or whatever it is specifically called) – I am using the Nokia Lumia 920. Some of my comments may be specific to Nokia rather than Microsoft but for simplification I am going to assume that they are one and the same.

The first opportunity I had to compare the two was last Saturday when my beloved wife and I decided to go for a stroll through the (bitterly cold) flatlands of Lincolnshire. We settled on a walk to the Cherry Tree Cafe, a renowned purveyor of hot drinks and home made cuisine in Sudbrooke.

To figure out how far it was to walk and how long it would take I used Google Maps. 3.5 miles and one hour five minutes. Perfect. We could get there for a cup of tea, walk back and I would be able to sit down and watch Wales wallop Ireland at the rugby. As a cross check I did the same with the Nokia Lumia 920. The answer I got was a slightly longer 3.6 miles but giving me an elapsed time of one hour thirty seven minutes. Oo I thought.

The walk actually took bang on one hour five minutes – it would have been less had my wife who is a bit of a racing ferret not had me in tow slowing her down.

Now it may be that Nokia assumes a slightly older and less mobile demographic as its main customer base but this isn’t a good start. The error of half an hour represented around 50% delta in actual time taken. Not much use if you rely on a service to plan journey times. That’s all for now.

PS note the header photo was a sign we passed in the village of North Greetwell. It should read North Greetwell, Please drive carefully through our village!

PPS Each phone photo taken with the other – review of cameras to follow soon.

Categories
End User phones

Android, Windows 8 – Windows 8, Android – just like that!

Samsung Windows8 and Android phonesCars always seem to look the same these days don’t they? That’s because they are all designed with optimum aerodynamic efficiency in mind. The result is a bit boring by and large and very challenging for an advertising industry that has to resort to increasingly off the wall ideas to differentiate their client’s product.

The mobile handset industry has to some extent evolved along similar lines. After years of trial and error there are only a few mechanical designs that make sense, notwithstanding the fact that manufacturers keep suing each other for copying their rounded edge or single button.

Here are two Samsung phones. Clearly one is Windows8 and one is Android. The only real differentiation is in the software running on them. The time can’t be so far off when all phones are pretty much the same, probably made in the same factories and with well established software and from a few global players. The applications sets will be pretty much identical on each platform.

All that will be left will be the challenge of how to differentiate one phone from the other – the pitch for cool factor. I was at a meeting yesterday where one presenter was clearly an Apple and Facebook enthusiast. I am not. I don’t trust either organisation. I am a Google and Twitter fan.

There is no real reason why I should trust Google and Twitter any more than Apple and Facebook or even Microsoft for that matter. They are all after my money one way or another.

So that’s it. The future of the mobile phone. I’d like go fast stripes on mine please…

Categories
Cloud End User phones

External SD card or no external SD card – Google Nexus4

Trefor DaviesJust scanned through a review of the Google Nexus 4 Android handset in the Grauniad. One of the things that caught my attention was the decision to not support an external SD card. Apple has lead the way with doing away with SD cards on the basis that they wanted everyone to do everything through the cloud.

The argument for a removable drive is that you can easily move data on and off the handset. My Galaxy S3 does support an external (micro) SD card but I have to say the only time I ever remove it is when I change handsets which, repair jobs aside, is less frequent than once a year.

Proponents of removable storage also remind us that we are using more and more space for photos and games. The former is certainly true for me but my needs would be accommodated with a large enough internal storage in the first place. What currently happens is that I run out of space on the phone (say) and have to adjust the settings to save media to the SD card which is a manual step that should be unnecessary.

All my pics are automatically backed up the the cloud using Instant Upload over WiFi. Once Instant Upload has done its stuff I then also shift them off the phone via USB to my laptop and once a month (ish) back up to one or two external hard drives. I’m not sure I’ll ever rely totally on the cloud for the backup.

So on balance I agree that we no longer need to support external SD cards as long as the phone itself has a suitably large capacity in the first place which, considering the low cost of memory, should not be difficult. Any growth in storage usage is likely to be down to a change in habits that accompany the use of a new handset so I can’t see that running out of space should be a problem – just make sure you have enough from the off.

Whaddaya think?

Categories
Business internet Regs

ISPA on the up – Facebook is new member

Trefor Davies Good news for the Internet Service Providers Association ISPA with Facebook joining its membership ranks. The trade association is becoming increasingly relevant in a world where there is a constant threat of regulation. We have to be careful that regulation does not stymie the explosive growth that has characterised the internet since its inception.

The argument is often a difficult one to get across. For example the debate over preventing access to pornography to children or how to approach the issue of online surveillance for the prevention of crime. On the face of it none of us want our kids exposed to porn and we all want to stop crime but there are wider ramifications to our personal rights and privacy that need to be well understood before anyone signs up to some of these proposed measures.

We have to have a grown up approach to the subject of internet regulation and have to be sensible to the fact that in a world that has moved online the problems have moved with it. It is fair that those that we pay to we pay to protect us should expect our cooperation when they ask for help in doing this. It isn’t always palatable to say no though sometimes it needs doing.

ISPA has over two hundred stakeholders and therefore has a difficult job in treading a line that is seen to be acceptable to all. The trade body by its very nature has also to work in very close cooperation with government departments, often helping to shape draft laws before they hit the public eye.

ISPA does a very good job of this and is also streetwise enough to understand how to approach “problems” such as the Draft Communications Data Bill that can sometimes be thrown out of left field1.  It is therefore an an endorsement of the organisation that the likes of Facebook and Google want to throw their weight behind it and I look forward to working with the ISPA team in 2013.

1 that’s the “on” side for the cricketers amongst us, at least the right handed ones.