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.
BrowserFame spotted a feature in the Canary (development) version of Chrome that would allow parents and schools to created ‘supervised user’ accounts whose access to the web can be controlled by a master account.
The approach is an extension of the standard accounts available in Chrome, allowing different users to have different settings and to be automatically signed-in to Google services …
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One of the cornerstones of Google’s reputation for innovation – its 20% Time scheme – is now effectively gone, according to a report by Quartz, citing anonymous Google employees.
Google’s 20% Time allowed engineers to spend the equivalent of one day a week working on a personal project without having to justify it to anyone. Gmail, Google maps, Adsense, Google Talk and many other products were born from this scheme. Adsense alone is responsible for around 25 percent of Google’s annual revenue.
Now, says the report, it is all but dead …
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Photo: technobuffalo.com
If you have a Chromecast stick but were having problems getting it to find one or more of your Android devices, give it another go: Google has just silently updated the firmware to address the issue.
Via AndroidCentral
The Ubuntu Edge, a handset developed by Linux enthusiasts to run both the Linux-based Ubuntu OS and Android, has beaten Pebble to set a new crowdfunding record of $10.3M, reports TNW.
The Indiegogo page has now accrued over $10.3 million in pledges, toppling the Pebble smartwatch as the highest every fixed crowdfunding campaign. The United States is the highest contributing nation, followed by the United Kingdom – where Canonical also has offices – and Germany …
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVE1OcfB1E4
HTC’s rebranding campaign, teased a couple of days ago, is not off to a good start …
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Google’s Streetview has taken us to some pretty interesting places lately. We’ve had the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Eiffel Tower, a Bond villain’s lair and a trek up to the top of Mount Fuji, but this is the first time we’ve been able to visit other dimensions – with a wander around inside Dr Who’s TARDIS.
Start here, outside London’s Earls Court tube station, then follow the instructions below the fold …
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Photo: phandroid.com
Chinese site MyDrivers (comical Google Translate warning) is citing Korean sources suggesting that the Nexus 5, next year’s replacement for the Nexus 4, will be made by LG and based on the G2. An earlier rumor suggested that the handset would be made by Motorola.
It has already been rumored that LG would be making next year’s Nexus 7 …
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Image: gawkerassets.com
In the circles most of us hang out, it might seem incredible that featurephones – aka dumb phones – were still outselling smartphones until recently, but that was indeed the case right up to the first quarter of this year. The latest Gartner figures show that smartphones finally broke ahead in Q2, achieving 51.8 percent of worldwide phone sales.
Smartphones accounted for 51.8 percent of mobile phone sales in the second quarter of 2013, resulting in smartphone sales surpassing feature phone sales for the first time,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. Asia/Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe exhibited the highest smartphone growth rates of 74.1 percent, 55.7 percent and 31.6 percent respectively, as smartphone sales grew in all regions …
There was good news for both Samsung and Google in the figures …
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Photo: chromespot.com
When Google announced (and later began rolling out) conversational search back in May, the company saw that as only the start. The company’s plans for the feature take us all the way into the realms of a true virtual personal assistant.
If you haven’t yet tried conversational search in Chrome, the feature as it stands is useful but basic. Speak a search like “How old is Barack Obama?” and Chrome will speak the answer. With a person, you could then ask a series of follow-up questions like “How tall is he?”, “Who is his wife?” and “How old is she?” and they would know who you were referring to in each question. That’s the functionality Google is rolling out, remembering who or what you just asked about and interpreting pronouns appropriately.
But Google’s long-term plans are far more ambitious. In an interview with TechFlash, Google Research Fellow Jeff Dean talked to Jon Xavier about his team’s work on machine learning and neural nets to expand Google’s abilities in conversational search …
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Photo: dailymail.co.uk
Larry Ellison is apparently still smarting from the court battle he lost back in May of last year when he accused Google of copyright infringement over its use of Java in Android, lost and ended up paying Google’s $4M court costs.
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Oracle bought Java from Sun Microsystems, and claimed ownership of some of the code used by Google. Google argued that the small amount of replicated code was ‘fair use’ and that the rest of it was coded from scratch simply using similar approaches to Java. Oracle lost.
In an interview with CBS’s Charlie Rose, transcribed in Business Insider, Ellison accuses Page of violating Google’s company slogan, Don’t be evil. Transcript below the fold …
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Google is increasing the bounty it pays to security researchers who discover and report bugs in Chromium by up to 500 percent after announcing that it has paid out a combined total of $2M in bug bounties across Chromium and Google-owned websites in just three years.
Today, the Chromium program is raising reward levels significantly. In a nutshell, bugs previously rewarded at the $1,000 level will now be considered for reward at up to $5,000. In many cases, this will be a 5x increase in reward level! We’ll issue higher rewards for bugs we believe present a more significant threat to user safety, and when the researcher provides an accurate analysis of exploitability and severity. We will continue to pay previously announced bonuses on top, such as those for providing a patch or finding an issue in a critical piece of open source software.
This follows earlier similar increases for reporting website vulnerabilities back in June.
Although the sums of money offered for reporting vulnerabilities are substantially lower than could be made by selling the info on the black market to those who would use it for nefarious reasons, the thinking behind bug bounties is it encourages those who would never dream of misusing the info to file prompt reports. Many large tech companies offer bug bounties, with Microsoft – a long-time hold-out – joining in a month ago.
We thought $35 was pretty cheap for Chromecast, but if you don’t even want to lay out that much (or, more likely, can’t get your hands on one at the moment), there’s an app for that.
XDAdevelopers (via Phandroid) pointed us to CheapCast, a free app in the Play Store that enables any Android device to emulate a Chromecast stick. Install it in two devices, one of which could be an Android TV or OUYA, and you can broadcast from one to the other. Don’t, however, expect full functionality at this stage …
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Photo: itpro.co.uk
Trading in Blackberry shares was briefly suspended in the lead-up to the company’s announcement that it is exploring ‘strategic alternatives’.
The Company’s Board of Directors has formed a Special Committee to explore strategic alternatives to enhance value and increase scale in order to accelerate BlackBerry 10 deployment. These alternatives could include, among others, possible joint ventures, strategic partnerships or alliances, a sale of the Company or other possible transactions.
The company, which once dominated the enterprise market, was extremely late moving into touchscreen phones and found itself increasingly isolated by both Bring Your Own Device policies and aggressive pitching to the corporate market by both Apple and Samsung.
This tweet by Techmeme editor Mahendra Palsule perhaps says it best:
The time for Blackberry to explore strategic alternatives was two years ago.
— Mahendra Palsule (@ScepticGeek) August 12, 2013
In an interesting development, the press release notes Prem Watsa CEO Fairfax Financial has resigned from the board:
With the announcement of the Special Committee, Prem Watsa, Chairman and CEO of Fairfax Financial informed the Company that he felt it was appropriate to resign due to potential conflicts that may arise during the process. Fairfax Financial is the largest BlackBerry shareholder. Mr. Watsa said, “I continue to be a strong supporter of the Company, the Board and Management as they move forward during this process, and Fairfax Financial has no current intention of selling its shares.”
Perhaps this indicates that the Blackberry’s largest shareholder is at least considering a buyout.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWewOTjaef8&start=047]
When organising a publicity event for a new product, there are a few things you need to check. Book the venue, check public transport links, make sure you have enough sample products … oh, and ask people not to bring weapons with them.
The video above is in Korean, but you get the idea. More details below the fold …
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Google Play’s Music All Access service – Google’s rather clumsily-named equivalent to Spotify – has now been rolled out to Europe, initially to nine countries.
The service, launched in the USA in May and later extended to Australia and New Zealand, is now available in Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom …
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Google’s insistence that there is room for both Google TV and Chromecast has seemingly been confirmed by an apparent new Sony-branded Google TV making its way through FCC approval.
The FCC filing spotted by @cj_000 (via Engadget) has all the hallmarks of a new Google TV device.
The NSZ-GU1 has an IR blaster like other Google TV boxes, and Bluetooth where the Chromecast doesn’t include either. The power adapter it’s tested with also could be overkill for a simple dongle-like device
Despite some speculation that it could be a Chromecast stick, it seems unlikely.
Google SVP Sundar Pichai recently told AllThingsD that Google TV “will be a full-fledged Android for television,” and that the company will be announcing more manufacturing partners at CES next year. One of those projects is believed to be an Android-powered set-top box with a motion sensor similar to Microsoft’s Kinect.
If you’re a mixed platform kind of person, with both iDevices and an Android media server, you can now use the popular XBMC media player to stream audio and video from your iPhone or iPad to your TV without any third-party hacks.
Engadget reports that Zeroconf support (aka Airplay compatibility) has been added to the latest pre-release Android version of XBMC, Gotham.
While this was a long-awaited development, interest may be reduced since Google launched its $35 Chromecast stick with similar functionality.
Full details and download from the XBMC site. The usual cautions about pre-release software apply.
Image: thehayden.org
The Guardian reports that a security flaw in Chrome allows anyone with access to a computer to view all of the saved logins without requiring any form of authentication.
A serious flaw in the security of Google’s Chrome browser lets anyone with access to a user’s computer see all the passwords stored for email, social media and other sites, directly from the settings panel. No password is needed to view them.
Besides personal accounts, sensitive company login details would be compromised if someone who used Chrome left their computer unattended with the screen active …
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Popular chat app whatsapp now allows Android users to exchange voice messages with a push-to-talk style function. The feature is also being pushed out simultaneously on the app’s other platforms: iOS, Blackberry, Nokia and Windows Phone.
We spend a lot of time at WhatsApp thinking how we can make keeping in touch easier, and we know there’s no substitute for hearing the sound of a friend or family member’s voice. So today we are introducing a new feature we are truly excited about: Voice Messages
While there are other push-to-talk apps out there, whatsapp has introduced a number of features which it says makes the functionality particularly easy to use … 
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Intel is hoping to help schools make the transition to electronic learning with the announcement of two low-spec Android tablets intended to be cheap enough for bulk purchase, reports PhoneArena.
The smaller and presumably cheaper of the two comes with an Atom Z2420 chip running at 1.2GHz, 1GB of RAM, and a 7-inch, 1024 by 600 pixel display. There are also 8GB of storage, a built-in speaker and mike, basic front and rear cameras, and a sealed battery that should last through 8 hours of usage. That the tablet is resistant to some water and shock damage, bearing IP41 certification, is worth noting.
The larger of the two Intel Education Tablets is powered by a 1.6GHz Atom Z2460 processor backed by 1GB of RAM and its 10.1-inch display has a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels. It offers twice the built-in storage, 16 gigs …
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While it was rumored that LG would be the first to launch a current-generation smartphone with a fingerprint sensor, with the forthcoming iPhone 5S widely expected to be second in line, it appears Korean company Pantech has beaten both of them to it with the new Vega LTE-A.
As the name suggests, the handset also supports the new faster-than-4G LTE-Advanced standard, the second one to do so after Samsung’s S4 LTE-A …
There had been rumors that the LG G2, due for launch tomorrow, would have a fingerprint sensor based on photos of the rear shell …
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Future smartphones could see significantly greater built-in flash storage as Samsung has successfully demonstrated a way to overcome the typical 16-64GB limit of individual memory chips, reports Engadget.
The main challenge in producing higher-capacity flash storage is one of scale — as density goes up, so does cell interference and the chances of a breakdown. Samsung may have overcome that barrier (if temporarily) by mass-producing the first 3D vertical NAND memory, or V-NAND
This is the reason that, if you open up a typical SSD, you’ll find it’s made up of a whole bunch of 16GB chips – and the reason that squeezing much more than 64Gb storage into a smartphone gets challenging. Samsung had previously managed to squeeze 64GB into a single NAND chip, but when you can stack up to 24 layers of 16GB storage on top of each other in a chip not much thicker than existing ones, you create the potential for up to 384GB on a single chip.
We may not be seeing that kind of storage in a phone anytime soon, but we can certainly expect capacities to increase and SSDs to get cheaper once the new chips are in mass production.
Photo: tractoroutdoor.com
The WSJ reports that more than a billion dollars were wiped off Samsung’s market value today following President Obama’s veto of the decision to ban the import of iPhone 4 and 3G iPad 2 devices into the USA. The fall represented 0.9 percent of the company’s market cap.
While a Presidential veto over-rules the original ITC ruling, the Financial Times reports that Samsung is appealing the ITC decision on the grounds that it only upheld one of the four patents it believes Apple has infringed. The appeal is expected to be held in Q1 2014. Were Apple to lose then, however, the impact would be significantly lower, as Apple is almost certain to have launched new iPhones and iPads by then, with the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 likely removed from Apple’s retail and online stores and seeing only residual sales elsewhere …
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The latest Chrome beta introduces the same slide navigation feature seen in IE8, sliding left or right to navigate back and forth between pages, reports The Verge. Apple also has a similar function in Safari on the Mac via its multi-touch trackpads.
Pinch-to-zoom also appears to be something Google is experimenting with too, thanks to an “enable pinch scale” option in the Chrome Canary flags. It’s more experimental than the swipe navigation, but it works as you’d expect by zooming in websites using your fingers. On Windows 8, Google is also supporting the onscreen keyboard fully in the desktop version by displaying it when you tap the address bar or text boxes.
You can download the latest beta for Chrome here. Chrome overtook Internet Explorer as the most popular browser in the U.S. just last month.