Archive for the ‘Software’ Category

Google Goes Social With Google+

Online search giant Google has unveiled a new product called Google+, which is the company’s latest attempt to break into the social networking market. Being in control of so many different products and niches on the internet, many consider this to be Google’s attempt to take part of Facebook’s user base. Google+ has similar features to Facebook, but also provides an easy way to manage contacts into groups, and integrates the company’s maps and images into the service.

The new social network Google+ contains a few key features that could make Google a permanent player in social networking. Circles, a system that allows users to place friends into groups, allowing them to share different forms of content with targeted clusters of friends; Hangouts, live multi-user video conferencing that permits friends to drop in and out of live group conversations; and lastly, Sparks, a feature that connects individuals on the network to others with common interests.

Google+ also features integration with Google’s Picasa picture manager. Picasa is easier to use and has many more features than anything Facebook has so far. Google has also made sure to attract mobile users right away, by concurrently having both an Android app and iPhone app at the ready. The current version of Google+ has only been released to a small number of users, which is being called a closed beta.

In short, Google+ is just another social network. The initial feature set and hype around the product both seem to be pretty strong. What remains to be seen is if people will enjoy using it, and like it enough to convert themselves and their friends to it. Facebook already has the huge user base, but Google+ is fresh and advertisement-free. I think Google+ has a lot of promise and is definitely worth giving a shot, that is if you’re able to find yourself an invite.

Apple iOS 5 New Feature Overview

It’s June again, and that means it’s time for Apple to make headlines. During Apple’s WWDC keynote today, the long-anticipated iOS 5 was unveiled. While the majority of features have been previewed to the public, iOS 5 isn’t set to officially launch until this fall.

The announcement of iOS 5 includes more than 200 new features for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. This latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system has a few features that stand above the rest; including doing away with the need for a computer, an updated notification menu, a new instant messaging app, and a physical shutter button for the camera on an iPhone.

Notifications

In iOS 5, all notifications — from every installed app — are centrally stored in a Notification Center, which can be swiped down from the top of your home screen. The Notification Center also includes live updating information from the weather and stocks app. You can swipe to clear all notifications, and if your phone is locked, you can swipe to go from the notification straight to the app that sent it.

Camera

The iPhone’s camera is now accessible via a lock-screen shortcut for quick and easy photo shoots. Just tap the shortcut and it takes you right into the camera app, primed and ready to take a photo. You can also now use the hardware volume up button on the side of your device to take a photo. That’s a big step for Apple to take, considering it once banned an app for offering the same functionality.

With iOS 5, users can turn on grid lines to help them compose photos. Other new and improved photo-taking features include auto-focus and auto-exposure lock, and the ability to do enhancements like red-eye reduction, crop, and rotation on-device.

PC Free

Apple made good on its talk about a post-PC world by making their iOS devices independent of home computers. Many customers want their iPad or iPhones to be their only computing devices, so Apple is obliging. Software updates are now over-the-air, at a time of the user’s choosing, and you can set up and activate your device from the device itself. The updates are now incremental, so they’re much smaller and only download what’s changed since the last one, instead of the whole OS over again.

Game Center

Game Center for iOS has become very popular over the past year, mostly thanks to the millions of iOS users who are playing and downloading new games on a daily basis. With iOS 5, Apple is introducing photo sharing to Game Center, as well as Achievement points and recommendations for friends, and the ability to see friends of friends. This should help with game discovery by providing more automatically generated suggestions, and you can buy those games direct from Game Center.

iMessage

This may be the biggest announcement regarding iOS today. It’s a new messaging service that automatically connects all iOS 5 users. It supports iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and it does text, video, photo, contact, and group messaging. iMessage also boasts delivery receipts and optional read receipts, so you know exactly when a message has been received, and when it’s been read, if that’s enabled. There’s also secure encryption, and it gets pushed out to all your devices. Messages arrive via the new messaging system at the top of the screen, and you can see when someone you’re having a conversation with is actively responding. This will work over Wi-Fi and 3G too, so there’s no limitations to its use.

Those are just a few of the features highlighted by Apple at the keynote, but they are good ones. It may look like lots of little tweaks but combined they do make a difference. The biggest mobile game-changer here is probably iMessage, but the fact that syncing can now be done wirelessly, and that iOS apps can operate PC-free are the biggest stories in terms of the future of computing in general. What are your first impressions of Apple’s iOS 5?

Microsoft Buys Skype for $8.5 Billion

Just days after reports that Google and Facebook were interested in partnering with (and possibly buying) VoIP company Skype, Microsoft has made its own announcement which will keep Skype all to itself. Microsoft has confirmed the purchase of Skype for $8.5 billion in cash.

Microsoft has stated that it sees Skype’s technology and services being applied across the board to both its consumer and business customers. This means enterprise customers will receive a new way to communicate over voice and video, but also customers who own products such as the Xbox 360 (with the Kinect) and Windows Phone 7 will be seeing the benefits from its introduction.

This is actually the second time Skype has been bought out. After Skype started in 2003, it was purchased by eBay in 2005 for $3.1 billion. In 2009, eBay sold the majority of its stake to a private investment group for $1.2 billion less than it originally paid. Now that Skype is going to be fully owned by Microsoft, there may be worries that the service could disappear from non-Microsoft platforms. In lieu of this, Microsoft has been quick to state that Skype will continue to be supported across all devices going forward.

Many people have questioned why this acquisition took place due to the fact that Microsoft’s own software already has considerable overlap with Skype. Windows Live Messenger offers free instant messaging, along with voice and video chat. Live Messenger currently boasts around 330 million active users each month. Skype, on the other hand, only has around a third the number of active users, 124 million each month.

Although Skype’s instant messaging and voice/video call features are broadly similar to those found in Windows Live Messenger, they are arguably more refined and well-liked. There is one key difference worth mentioning though: about 8 million Skype users pay for the service. Skype also has points of presence across the globe, making it easy to buy phone numbers in foreign markets to cheaply establish an international telephone presence.

With this large acquisition now official, what everyone is wondering is what Microsoft intends to do with Skype beyond integrating it into existing services and platforms. Microsoft is shelling out a lot of cash with the $8.5 billion price tag, and you have to wonder how much of that is a premium to ensure Google or Facebook weren’t chosen partners instead.

Whether or not Skype stays in the number one spot for VoIP communications while under Microsoft ownership remains to be seen. Facebook and Google can be expected to further develop and break into the the voice and video market, so Skype will have to keep innovating and producing features in order to keep its competitive edge.

Microsoft Bing Uses Google Search Results

According to a report on their official blog, Google has run a sting operation that says it proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google and also the sites they select from the search results.  Apparently Bing has been using that information to improve its own search listings.  Bing’s search results potentially improving (or getting worse) through this tactic is the equivalent of copying exam answers off of the smart kid who sits next to you in class.

Google reports that “it all started with tarsorrhaphy.”  Google was looking at the search results for an unusual misspelled query [torsorophy].  The correct spelling—tarsorrhaphy—along with results for the corrected query, were being returned by Google’s search algorithm.  At that time, Bing had no results for the misspelling.  Later in the summer, Bing started returning Google’s first result to their users without offering the spell correction.  I’ve included the screenshots of this occurrence below, which were taken directly from Google’s blog.  To be able to return such a result without the correct spelling led to further investigation.

Google reported that over the next few months they noticed that URLs from their search results would later appear in Bing with increasing frequency for all kinds of queries, even including search results that were considered mistakes in the algorithm.  To test their suspicions, Google created about 100 “synthetic queries”—queries that you would never expect a user to type, such as [hiybbprqag].  As a one-time experiment, each synthetic query had a webpage which had nothing to do with the query inserted as the top result.

Engineers at Google were tasked to enter the synthetic queries into the search box on the Google home page, and click on the results (the inserted results).  Within a couple weeks, the inserted results started appearing in Bing.  The report states that Bing is most likely using a combination of Internet Explorer 8 and the Bing Toolbar to mimic the search results.  More details and screenshots of Google’s experiments can be found on their initial report posted to the Google blog.

I for one have always had a positive experience using Google as my main search engine.  Since Bing was announced, Microsoft has been trying to break into the search engine market with various promotions and television commercials.  This large push to gain users (and essentially pull them away from Google) has led me astray from using Bing, and these findings by Google just make me want to use it even less.