Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer who started his career on PC World and has written for dozens of computer and technology magazines, as well as numerous national newspapers, business and in-flight magazines. He has also written two novels.
He thinks wires are evil and had a custom desk made to hide them, known as the OC Desk for obvious reasons.
He considers 1000 miles a good distance for a cycle ride, and Chernobyl a suitable tourist destination. What can we say, he’s that kind of chap.
He speaks fluent English but only broken American, so please forgive any Anglicised spelling in his posts.
Starbucks has confirmed multiple reports of users of its smartphone app having three-figure sums stolen from their accounts in the form of gift certificates, reports CNN.
One user lost $550 in a matter of minutes, his account auto-reloaded each time it was emptied by a hacker sending a series of $50 gift cards. Other users have also reported three-figure losses within a matter of seconds or minutes …
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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd9RQ07kcy0]
Timelapse videos are a great way to share experiences like cycle rides, hikes or road-trips, where you want to show all the scenery in a clip short enough that your friends will actually watch. But conventional timelapse video tends to look rather jerky – the problem Microsoft set out to solve with Hyperlapse.
The software is now available for beta-testing on Android, and early indications are that it produces impressive results – as you can see in the sample video above of a walk across London’s Millenium Bridge …
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Google is in the process of a radical change in its approach to IT security, reports the WSJ, moving its data from protected internal networks out onto the Internet.
At first glance, it sounds like a crazy move: moving corporate data from protected internal systems, only accessible within Google buildings and via VPN, to publicly-accessible servers. But Google engineering manager Rory Ward believes that the conventional ‘perimeter security’ model no longer reflects the realities of today’s world.
The perimeter security model is often compared to a medieval castle: a fortress with thick walls, surrounded by a moat, with a heavily guarded single point of entry and exit. Anything located outside the wall is considered dangerous, while anything located inside the wall is trusted. Anyone who makes it past the drawbridge has ready access to the resources of the castle […]
However, with the advent of a mobile workforce, [this approach is] fraught with danger.
In other words, if half your workforce is accessing resources from outside the network anyway, you need a different mindset …
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The controversy over the ‘right to be forgotten‘ by Google has often seemed destined to run forever, Google arguing that it was being asked to make “difficult and debatable judgements” based on “very vague and subjective tests,” while European courts said that the company wasn’t fully complying with the law.
Google said that it was complying with court orders by removing “outdated or irrelevant” sensitive information about individuals from its European sites, while leaving the .com site untouched. European courts want Google to remove results from google.com also.
A piece in the WSJ suggests that a compromise may be reached, however, as Google revealed examples of what it described as easy and difficult cases …
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Following a Reddit AMA on government surveillance, Google has admitted that while it does encrypt Hangouts conversations, it does not use end-to-end encryption, meaning the company itself can tap into those sessions when it receives a government court order requiring it to do so. This contrasts with the end-to-end encryption used by some services, like Apple’s FaceTime, which cannot be tapped even by the company offering the service.
Motherboard noted that Google has always been vague about the level of encryption offered for Google Hangouts, and that when pressed by principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union Christopher Soghoian, the company would say only that messages were encrypted “in transit” …
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Cycling is definitely the fastest and most pleasant way to get around central London, and the large-scale cycle hire scheme – informally known as Boris Bikes, after Mayor Boris Johnson who launched the scheme – finally has an official Android app.
Named after the scheme’s new sponsor, the Santander Cycles App allows users to find the nearest docking station, check availability of bikes and obtain a release code to hire one. Transport for London has long made the data publicly available, allowing developers to create their own apps with limited functionality, but it’s taken five years to create an official app that allows you to hire the bikes.
There are more than 700 Boris Bike docking stations in London, with a total of 11,500 bicycles available. More than 10 million journeys were made by Boris Bike last year. Users pay £2 ($3) for a one-day membership, and can then make unlimited use of the bikes for journeys of up to 30 minutes each (which will pretty much get you anywhere to anywhere in central London).
The app is a free download from Google play, and the full press release can be found below.
London’s newest red icon – Santander Cycles – today launched a revolutionary new App, making the cycle hire scheme easier to use than ever before.
The new Santander Cycles App for Android and iOS smartphones is free to download for both members and casual users. In addition to viewing the nearest docking station and bike availability, the new App is able to send a ‘bike release’ code straight to a user’s phone, which means they can hire a cycle without having to use the docking station terminal.
All customers need to do is register with their bank card, use the App to ‘hire now’ from a nearby docking station, and just tap the code into a docking point to release a bike for use.
Extra features of the Santander Cycles App
Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said:
‘The new Santander Cycles App will make finding and hiring a bike in our great Capital city even more of a doddle. The App is packed full of handy new features and is part and parcel of our plans to take the cycle hire scheme to the next level and encourage more people on to two wheels.’
Leon Daniels, TfL’s Managing Director of Surface Transport, said:
‘This is just one of the exciting new developments we’re bringing to life with our new partnership with Santander. Together we’re working hard to make cycling an integral part of London life, so anyone can jump on a bike to get to work, the shops or discover the Capital. The new official Santander Cycles App will make hiring a bike much easier for both members and casual users by being able to find the nearest docking station and check how many bikes are available, and get an access code so you can just hop on and go without spending time at the terminal.’
Nathan Bostock, CEO, Santander UK, said:
‘We’re absolutely committed to growing and developing Santander Cycles together with TfL by making more bikes available, providing more docking stations and offering extra benefits in future to give Londoners and visitors to the Capital the best possible experience.
‘Since announcing our partnership in February of this year, we’ve already added 3 per cent cashback on cycle hire journeys for customers using their 1|2|3 credit card, and the App further demonstrates our commitment to making the cycle scheme more fun, rewarding and easy.’
The new red-and-white livery of Santander Cycles is already widespread across London and the transition is continuing at pace as docking stations and distribution vans are rebranded.
Santander Cycles is the second-largest cycle hire scheme in Europe, and since it was introduced in 2010, around 40 million journeys have been made using the bikes, making it a popular and affordable way to travel around London for work or leisure.
Usage of the scheme rose by a quarter last year and is at a record high, with more than 10 million journeys made in 2014. Customer satisfaction is also at an all-time high, with over 80 per cent of members intending to renew their membership.
China – long viewed as one of the key growth markets for smartphones – is now approaching saturation point, according to data being released today by IDC. The WSJ reports that smartphone shipments fell for the first time in six years, 4.3% down year-on-year in the previous quarter. Other sources say sales are still growing, but at a much-reduced rate.
Experts say the slowdown is largely driven by the disappearance of China’s first-time buyers. Smartphones now have a more than 90% penetration rate in China, said Tom Kang, research director with market-research firm Counterpoint, meaning just about everybody in China who wants a smartphone already has one. “China is now a replacement market,” Mr. Kang said.
Even local brands like Xiaomi are finding it tougher to compete, say analysts, while Samsung fell from the best-selling brand in China a year ago to fourth place today. Samsung was, however, upbeat about its prospects in the country.
“While there are signs that the explosive growth of smartphones in China will slow this year, the vast majority of China’s 885 million mobile users are using low-end and mid-range smartphones,” Samsung said in a statement. “This leaves plenty of room for upgrades to high-end phones as China’s market matures.”
Android manufacturers are also facing increased competition in China from Apple, which recently hit 26% market share.
Photo: Darley Shen/Reuters
We learned back in March that Nintendo would finally be creating games for smartphones and tablets, featuring Mario and other popular characters – though not in their original games. Today brings a mix of bad and good news …
The bad news is that Nintendo announced in its financial results presentation that it is planning to release just five games by March 2017.
Regarding the number of the titles, you may want to know that we will release approximately five titles by the end of the next fiscal year, which is the end of March 2017.
The company says that while it recognizes this will be seen as a small number, there are good reasons behind the decision …
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Madagascar is an island off the coast of Southeast Africa, formed around 88 million years ago, its plants and animals forming in relative isolation from the rest of the world. Over 90% of its wildlife is found only on the island – and you can now take a virtual trip there thanks to the latest Street View imagery from Google’s Trekker system …
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Consumer Reports ranked the Sony Smartwatch 3 bottom out of 11 smartwatches after it twice failed tests of its waterproofing claims. The well-respected non-profit carried out a rigorous set of lab tests on 11 competing watches, including the Apple Watch, Asus Zen, the LG G Watch R, Martian Notifier, Moto 360, Pebble Steel, Samsung Gear S and Sony Smartwatch 3.
The organization tested the watches for durability, water-resistance, health functionality, readability in bright and low light, ease of use, and ease of interaction …
An example of a webpage made completely unusable by injected ads
A Google-sponsored study carried out by the University of California, Berkeley and Santa Barbara found “tens of millions of instances” of ad malware in the course of just a few months. In all, they found that a staggering 5.5% of unique IP addresses – representing millions of users – were affected.
Ad injection malware drops its own ads into whatever web page an infected machine displays. Revenue from these ads is filtered through ad networks, where genuine companies end up paying the bills, effectively stealing revenue that should have gone to the websites themselves.
Some of this malware goes further than simply injecting ads …
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Sony is rolling out a new firmware update for Xperia Z2 and Z3 devices, with a number of improvements and bug fixes for Android 5.0 Lollipop. The update covers the Xperia Z3, Xperia Z3 Compact, Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact, Xperia Z2 and Xperia Z2 Tablet.
Sony has brought back the ‘close all apps’ button in the activity menu, enabled lock-screen notifications that work on all devices, ensured the LED light remains available in all sound modes and made a number of other bug fixes.
Sony first rolled out Lollipop to the Z3 last month.
Motorola Mobility, the mobile phone company sold by Google to the Chinese company Lenovo last year, has been ordered to pay $10M damages for infringing a Fujifilm patent. The patent concerned a method of converting color smartphone photos to monochrome, reports Reuters.
There’s a certain irony to the case, as Google was widely believed to have acquired Motorola in the first place for its patent portfolio, retaining most of the patents when it sold the company …
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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvQhMIyksHQ]
T-Mobile is hitting back at Verizon’s ‘Never settle’ ad campaign, offering to lend Verizon customers a new smartphone and port their existing number to it for a 14-day trial. If customers prefer T-Mobile’s service, the company will pay off Verizon’s Early Termination Fees up to a maximum of $650.
Any outstanding payments on your phone are also paid off, within the same overall limit, when customers choose to trade in their old phone for a new one on T-Mobile’s Simple Choice plan.
T-Mobile promises you won’t lose out if you choose to stay with Verizon. You always retain your existing phone, the carrier will refund any fees incurred on its own network and will pay any costs for switching back to Verizon.
The offer opens on 13th May, running until the end of the month. Visit t-mobile.com or one of the company’s retail stores between those dates for details. The company introduced crowd-sourced coverage maps back in March.
The NY Times reports that Google is embedding engineers into Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) in a bid to increase diversity in its technical staff. Currently only around 1% of Google’s engineers are African American, and the company said last year that its workforce diversity was “miles” from where it wanted to be.
HBCUs are higher education institutions established before 1964 primarily to serve the black community, while accepting students of all ethnic backgrounds. There are more than 106 HSBUs in the USA, and Google is so far sending engineers to five of the biggest …
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Meerkat may have had the launch of its live video streaming app rather overshadowed by Twitter’s official app, Periscope, but it has today made it to Android ahead of its competitor.
Meerkat allows you to live stream video from your phone to all of your Twitter followers at once. Press ‘Stream’, and instantly your live video stream shows up in your follower’s Twitter feeds.
When your followers have the app, they will also get pushed notified with your live stream, watch, comment and interact with it using the app.
It’s officially a beta, so don’t expect everything to work perfectly, but TechCrunch says that it appears to work well …
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The head of a British exam board has said that students should be allowed Internet access – including the ability to carry out Google searches – during exams. The head of the OCR school examinations board Mark Dawe told the BBC’s Today program that this would accurately reflect the way they would work after leaving school.
“It is more about understanding what results you’re seeing rather than keeping all of that knowledge in your head, because that’s not how the modern world works,” said Dawe.
He compared the idea to the debate about whether to have books available during a test, saying: “In reality you didn’t have too much time [to consult the book] and you had to learn it anyway.”
The Oxford, Cambridge & RSA board’s chief said that while permitting Internet access during exams would not happen in the next weeks or months, it was “inevitable” at some stage …
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Evernote, which previously offered only a free Basic membership or a $50/year Premium one, has now added a middle tier. The new Evernote Plus subscription offers many of the premium features for half-price, at $25/year. The catch? Limits to the amount of data you can add to Evernote.
Evernote Plus limits you to 1GB/month total, a maximum note size of 50MB and no more than 250 emails per month – and you’ll be missing out on a few features, like the ability to search inside PDFs and Office documents. The full comparison chart can be found here.
Evernote has also increased Premium prices in some regions, including the U.S. if you pay monthly, up to $5.99/month. However, the company says that it has locked in existing pricing for current subscribers.
If you’re currently paying and the price of Premium went up in your region, then we’ve locked you into your rate for a year, or more. As long as you continue in your current plan, your price will adjust at your first renewal after April 29, 2016.
Finally, some regions have seen a price fall, and the company’s FAQ explains how to switch to the lower price.
Evernote for Android gained business card scanning late last year.
HTC has warned of a projected decline in sales of up to 29% in the current quarter after deciding to focus on mid-tier and high-end smartphones rather than going for volume sales at the lower end. Defending the strategy in an interview in the WSJ, the company’s CFO Chang Chia-lin said that brand image is, in the longer term, more important than sales volumes.
We think that’s the right strategy because we started as a high-end player, and there is still room to go in terms of being a sizable market-share player. The flagship product would create a halo effect, drawing mid-tier and entry-level models along with it. Hopefully, the pie will grow and the mix will be healthy. It’s natural that revenue contribution is associated with brand perception, and that’s something we care about.
Chang argued that while low-cost brands may pick up the volume sales from the bottom end of the market, they risk not being seen as a cool tech brand by more upmarket customers …
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Google hasn’t always enjoyed the best of relationships with news websites, publishers arguing that search results often show a large enough excerpt from the story that people don’t need to click through to the site, especially within the Google News tab. This has been especially true in Europe, where non-English publications are fighting for a much smaller potential readership.
The conflict came to a head in Spain last year, where the government passed a new law which would have required it to pay Spanish news sites for the excerpts shown in its search results, and Google responded by closing Google News in Spain. Although an unofficial compromise was found, grumblings by news sites have continued.
Google now believes its Digital News Initiative offers a three-pronged approach to tackling the “truly radical and challenging changes” being experienced in the media business within Europe …
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Re/code has a roundup of what analysts are expecting from Google this afternoon, when the company announces its Q1 earnings and provides at least a little guidance on the future.
Consensus estimates are for net revenue of $14.12 billion, a 16 percent uptick year over year. Currency winds could drag down the numbers.
Google isn’t expected to reveal much information about its future plans, but analysts expect at least some degree of clarity in three areas, says the piece …
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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJJyIrOANFg]
Samsung’s latest ad for the Galaxy S6 promotes Fast Charging mode, where a 10-minute top-up claims to give the phone enough juice for four hours of use; wireless charging; and Ultra Power Saving mode, switching to a greyscale display and limiting functionality to maximize remaining battery-life.
The company posted a drop-test video of the S6/edge earlier this month, while Dom Esposito put the smartphone’s video capabilities to the test and described it as “the best camera you can get on an Android smartphone.”
As part of its commitment to being transparent about the data Google holds on you, the company has long allowed you to view your search history. It’s now gone one better, letting you download that history.
You can download all of your saved search history to see a list of the terms you’ve searched for. This gives you access to your data when and where you want.
I’m not quite sure why anyone would want to do this, but given the company’s numerous run-ins with various governments over data privacy, it probably wants to play safe.
Via Google Operating System and TNW
OnePlus has been teasing an announcement for a few days now, but like last month’s tease for a new gaming product that turned out to be a very early April Fool’s joke, this one also turned out to be rather an anti-climax.
Starting today, the One will be available without an invite. Forever.
That’s right. In our first big celebration of the One’s successful year, we are opening up sales globally for everyone, every day of the week.
The company said that it felt it had “matured” sufficiently to handle the increased demands of open sales …
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