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.
If you’re in the UK and plan to finally get your hands on a Chromecast, the good news is that the existing BBC iPlayer Android app is already compatible with the device, reports iMore.
It may take a minute or so, or even a relaunch of the app to kick it into gear. When it’s ready to go you’ll see the standard Chromecast logo along top of the app. To cast your content you need to first connect the app by tapping on the Chromecast logo and selecting which you want to pair to. After that just go ahead and choose what you want to watch and let it do the rest … Expand Expanding Close
Rumors that Amazon’s set-top TV box will double as a games console have been lent weight by photos of a Bluetooth controller claimed to have been discovered in an overseas regulatory filing by Zatznotfunny.
The wireless Bluetooth controller features a gaggle of controls, including both shoulder buttons and triggers, in addition to media playback transport controls. And we give Amazon credit for using Android-esque icons for home, menu, and back … Expand Expanding Close
The Washington Postreports that Google has begun automatically encrypting web searches carried out in China to defeat government monitoring and censorship, and plans to continue rolling out the program globally to prevent monitoring by the NSA.
China’s Great Firewall, as its censorship system is known, has long intercepted searches for information it deemed politically sensitive. Google’s growing use of encryption there means that government monitors are unable to detect when users search for sensitive terms, such as “Dalai Lama” or “Tiananmen Square,” because the encryption makes them appear as indecipherable strings of numbers and letters … Expand Expanding Close
The Malaysian Star (via the Huffington Post) reports that it has had calls from readers who have been looking for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 … on Google Maps. Spotting static images of aircraft in flight, they have been reporting them as downed aircraft.
With the search entering its fourth day on Tuesday, several concerned citizens called The Star, believing that they have discovered the missing airplane after scrolling through the Google Maps satellite images.
While Google Maps images are of course typically months to years old, surprisingly it is possible for Internet users to help search for the plane in contemporary satellite images … Expand Expanding Close
Google’s handy Chromecast dongle is to go on sale in “many more countries” in the next few weeks, according to an SXSW keynote speech by Sundar Pinchai reported by TNW.
The speech seemingly majored on ‘vague,’ with no specific countries listed and U.S. sales of the $35 device described only as in the millions.
Google announced a month ago that the UK would be the second market to get access to Chromecast, going on sale in the electrical retail chain Currys at or around the beginning of this month. At the time of writing it was not yet showing up in a search on the company’s website.
Once it does go on sale, buying one is pretty much a no-brainer if you own both a television and an Android device. Chromecast support is available in a wide range of apps, that include YouTube, Netflix, HBO GO, Hulu Plus, Pandora, Plex and many others – with more likely to be joining the list thanks to a Chromecast SDK, making it easier for developers to add support.
Samsung’s description of a nine-minute video as a ‘quick look’ at the Gear 2 and Gear Fit smartwatches may be about as accurate as its claim that they are everything users “loved” about the original Gear, but if you want to know everything the watches do and how to do it in full detail, this video is your friend.
A Google doodle appearing on the company’s homepage in some countries (though not yet the U.S.) celebrates tomorrow’s International Women’s Day, leading to a video when you click on it.
The video features brief clips of women from all around the world, in support of the United Nations theme that “Equality for Women is Progress for All.” The doodle is likely to appear on the U.S. site at some point today.
The full message from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appears below.
This International Women’s Day, we are highlighting the importance of achieving equality for women and girls not simply because it is a matter of fairness and fundamental human rights, but because progress in so many other areas depends on it.
Countries with more gender equality have better economic growth. Companies with more women leaders perform better. Peace agreements that include women are more durable. Parliaments with more women enact more legislation on key social issues such as health, education, anti-discrimination and child support.
The evidence is clear: equality for women means progress for all.
This simple truth must be central as we work to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goals by next year’s deadline and craft an agenda for the years beyond 2015.
Important gains have been made in access to primary education for girls and political representation by women. But progress remains far too slow and uneven.
A baby girl born today will still face inequality and discrimination, no matter where her mother lives. We have a common obligation to ensure her right to live free from the violence that affects one in three women globally; to earn equal pay for equal work; to be free of the discrimination that prevents her from participating in the economy; to have an equal say in the decisions that affect her life; and to decide if and when she will have children, and how many she will have.
I have a message for every girl born today, and to every woman and girl on the planet: Realizing human rights and equality is not a dream, it is a duty of governments, the United Nations and every human being.
I also have a message for my fellow men and boys: play your part. All of us benefit when women and girls – your mothers, sisters, friends and colleagues — can reach their full potential.
Together, let us work for women’s rights, empowerment and gender equality as we strive to eliminate poverty and promote sustainable development. Equality for women is progress for all!
HP’s new tablet – simply called the HP 8 – not only bears more than a passing resemblance to the non-Retina version of Apple’s iPad mini, it appears to use an almost identical 7.85-inch IPS 1024×768 display.
It looks like a reasonable if unexciting buy for the money, with an Allwinner quad-core ARM chip, 1GB RAM, 16GB storage, a microSD slot (supporting up to 32GB cards) and running Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean) … Expand Expanding Close
Really. In a bid to promote the G Flex as “the most human phone ever,” LG created the type of ad that is likely to make you want to head rapidly in the opposite direction the moment you catch sight of its phone …
Google has announced an experimental feature in the developer version of Chrome OS that allows you to access more than one user profile at the same time, easily flicking between them, as well as passing both tabs and files back-and-forth between profiles.
Switching profiles is as easy as clicking on the profile picture in the system tray popup. […] One nice thing, but still highly experimental, is that you can move windows to different profiles with a simple right click in the window top bar. As you can see in the video, even the Files App even supports this feature.
To access the feature in the Chrome OS dev channel, enter the following line:
chrome://flags/#enable-multi-profiles
If you’re not currently using the dev channel, you can find instructions for switching here, but note that by definition you can expect to experience some glitches. The stable channel is always recommended when working on anything important.
Don’t expect to learn anything new from it, as it’s just a teaser, but you can watch above the 30-second TV ad for the Samsung Galaxy S5 shown during the Oscars. The ad was clearly put together especially for the event, with an awards theme.
Samsung was one of the main sponsors of the award ceremony, but it was a tweeted photo taken by Ellen DeGeneres on a Galaxy Note 3 that probably generated the more valuable publicity for the company, with over 2.5M retweets.
Samsung announced its new flagship handset at Mobile World Congress last month. The water-resistant phone has a 5.1-inch full HD display, 2.5GHz quad-core processor, 16MP main camera, heart-rate sensor and fingerprint scanner. Samsung has said that the phone will be on sale “by April.”
The Times of India reports that local phone maker Karbon Mobiles is launching phones that can run both Android and Windows Phone, with the first handsets expected to be available by June.
The company has just signed the licence agreement with Microsoft to make Windows-based phones and will put this along with its existing Android system to bring out the dual-OS phones in about six months, the company’s chairman Sudhir Hasija said.
While I can see the sense in a dual-boot laptop/tablet that can run both Windows 8 and Android, a dual-platform phone seems rather more of a ‘because we can’ gimmick. The explanation may be as simple as Microsoft waiving the license fee to help grow the platform, especially after Nokia announced its (kind of) Android handsets. Hasija commented:
Microsoft has eased the regulations and is opening up its platform for other players.
Karbon gets a cost-free talking point for its new handsets, Microsoft gets a bit more market share in a growth market. We’re just not sure what consumers get …
It’s not just fictitious towns you have to look out for on Google Maps: Microsoft engineer and former Marine Bryan Seely demonstrated to ValleyWag how he was able to exploit the open nature of the product to intercept phone calls to both the FBI and Secret Service.
Google’s Android head Sundar Pichai has been answering questions at Mobile World Congress and French site FrAndroid provided a roundup of a few of the more interesting snippets (in addition to his denial that Google tried to buy WhatsApp).
Update: Google provided a direct transcript (though no video was made available) in which not surprisingly Pinchai is a little less self criticizing:
Sorry, the premise of the question is because Android is open, it has more security issues? Respectfully, I’m not sure that’s a correct premise of the question. Open platforms historically undergo a lot of scrutiny, but there are a lot of advantages to having an open source platform from a security standpoint. I would argue that it’s the best way for a platform to be secure, because every researcher in the world can inspect it, every developer in the world can inspect it, and I think that contributes a lot to Android security.
Android was built to be very, very secure. The thing that you’re seeing is because Android is an open platform, many people can ship Android in many different ways and so there are some partners when they ship devices, they have an older version of Android. And sure you can have a security vulnerability there, but that doesn’t mean Android isn’t secure. We go to great lengths–the depth of work in Android to make it secure; the depth of work done by Google Play…Google Play automatically scans and verifies thousands of applications for malware. We track data on this. It’s state of the art in terms of what we do. What you see across the ecosystem…people will ship good phones and keep them updated…you will have some phones that will not be updated. That’s where we see issues. Not Android at a fundamental level.
As long as you’re on a phone and able to update, Android is very very secure.It’s designed to be very very secure. I would go as far to say — open systems are far more secure. We do this on the browser side. Chrome is very secure. The fact that some things are open, by any stretch of the imagination, does not make it any less secure.
Malware targets where users are. When you say numbers like 90% of malware is targeting Android, you know, I hate to point out that if you’re a smart business person running this malware company, that’s what you should do. It’s the wrong way to look at the lens. Obviously, you will always see more malware targeting Android because Android is used more than any smartphone platform by a pretty substantial difference. I think that drives a lot of it so I understand that part of it. What matters much more is – as a user, if you use Android, are you fundamentally more compromised? We don’t think so.”
Responding to a question about malware on the Android platform, Pichai said:
We cannot guarantee that Android is designed to be safe, the format was designed to give more freedom. When people talk about 90% of malware for Android, they must of course take into account the fact that it is the most popular operating system in the world. If I had a company dedicated to malware, I would also be addressing my attacks on Android … Expand Expanding Close
Search for Agloe, NY, in Google Maps and the small town will duly appear. Which is odd, as Agloe doesn’t exist, and never has.
BigThink reports that Agloe was one of a number of ‘paper towns,’ places that were invented by early map-makers back in the 1930s in order to catch out rival companies who stole their work.
How do you prove someone stole your map, if that map accurately reflects reality? The answer: add fantasy! Mapmakers had been able to take their competitors to court by pointing out fake places (a.k.a. paper towns) on their maps that were copied from their original work! For this reason, fictitious roads are often called trap streets: because they entrap the company copying them onto their own maps … Expand Expanding Close
Goophone, the Chinese company famous for making cheap-and-cheerful rip-offs of high-end handsets, has taken just two days to create its copy of the Samsung Galaxy S5. Unlike its iPhone copy, based on a low-spec Android handset, the company has even got close to the real specs with its Goophone S5 (yep, it really is that shameless).
The knock-off handset matches the real thing with a 1920×1080 display, 2GB RAM and 2800mAh battery, gets close with cameras (13MP/5MP against 16MP/2.1MP) and includes dual SIM slots into the bargain. Don’t expect the same performance from the 2GHz octa-core MediaTek chip, however, and the quality of the screen is unlikely to stand close scrutiny.
At $300 contract-free, it comes in at around half the expected price of the real thing.
A day after Motorola revealed that it is working on a smartwatch for release later this year, Android Police posted low-resolution photos of what it says is an early prototype from some point last year. The unnamed source claims that the watch was code-named Gem but known to the development team as the Google Watch.
With Motorola having now parted company from Google, and Google believed to be working on an LG-made Nexus-branded smartwatch to be announced next month and launched at Google I/O in June, the one certainty is that this device won’t be launched as the Google Watch … Expand Expanding Close
Samsung has posted an infographic providing a visual history of its Galaxy S series of smartphones following the launch of the new Galaxy S5.
It’s a slightly surprising move, serving to draw attention to the relatively modest boost in specs of the latest model, with a tiny increase in screen size, small bump in processing power and a bit more battery life (likely accounting for most of the weight gain), with the increase in camera resolution from 13 to 16MP the only substantial improvement shown.
No mention is made of the fingerprint scanner and heart-rate sensor that were the most notable new features.
The Sony Xperia Z2 waterproof phone with 4K video recording
Sony announced four new products at Mobile World Congress: two new Xperia phones, a matching tablet and a fitness band.
The Xperia Z2, the replacement for its Z1 waterproof phone, adds 4K video recording, SteadyShot image-stabilisation, digital noise-cancelling stereo mics and what the company describes as its ‘brightest and most vivid’ LED display. We first got wind of the 4K video capabilities last month via a screengrab of the camera app … Expand Expanding Close
Rumors of Nokia launching an Android phone seemed unlikely for a company acquired by Microsoft, but the company today announced not just one Android device, but three: the Nokia X, X+ and XL. The company’s flirtation with Android does, however, appear to be a token one – not that Microsoft is pleased.
The three budget phones are effectively hybrid devices. Not only have they been given an overlay designed to make them look like they are running Windows Phone, they aren’t even running a standard version of Android and won’t be able to run apps from the Google Play store …
Streaming TV is heating-up. Amazon looks set to launch its TV box in March, we’re expecting Apple to announce a new Apple TV box in April, and Google is reputed to be not far behind with a Nexus-branded box.
So-called cord-cutting – people who give up their cable TV subscriptions in favor of streaming content over the web – is growing in popularity. Mobile TV viewing on tablets is increasingly common.
All of which makes me wonder whether we’re witnessing the beginning of the end of live TV … ? Expand Expanding Close
Amazon’s TV box, which the company is believed to have been working on for around a year, is to be launched next month, according to unnamed content distribution sources cited by re/code. It had originally been expected to be launched in time for last year’s holiday sales.
People I’ve talked to who are partnering with Amazon believe the company is aiming for a March rollout […]
Sources tell me Amazon’s box will be powered by Google’s Android operating system, which is also not a surprise — Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets use a “forked” version of Android … Expand Expanding Close
Judging by the number of posts made on the first day (assuming they’re not all made by Google employees), it looks like it could prove a popular resource. Though a good starting-point for anyone new to the dongle is our own how-to setup guide.
Update: TheInformation is reporting that Google was willing to beat Facebook’s $19 billion offer. More behind a paywall here.
Google tried to buy messaging service WhatsApp for $10B prior to Facebook’s successful $19B bid, according to two separate sources cited by Fortune. It has also been reported that Google had earlier offered WhatsApp “millions of dollars” simply for the right to be informed if WhatsApp received an offer from anyone else, an offer the messaging company turned down.
The size of the offers seem almost incredible given that the app is free and has no ads. Its entire revenue stream depends on users signing up to a 99c annual subscription after their first year, giving it – at present – a revenue ceiling of $450M a year.
But it’s likely that WhatsApp’s real appeal was it provides access to a core market for the future: mobile-first users in developing markets … Expand Expanding Close
