First, there was the Nexus One, manufactured by HTC, which set the bar for Android powered phones. Then, the Nexus S, which barely moved the bar at all, and everyone ignored in terms of innovation (which is to say the only new features in the Nexus S were all but neglected by other manufacturers, nobody implimented them); now, there's the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. They're not even HIDING the fact that samsung made this version, and it is raising the bar again.

Allow me to elaborate. The Google Nexus One, was all but unknown to be manufactured by HTC, you actually have to look it up to find the information. of course, the phone was only so popular, considering you could pretty much only buy it, unlocked, from google (a smart move, if I do say so myself). At the time at which the Nexus One hit the market, Android was primarily running Donut (v.1.6) on phones like the HTC Hero. a 500Mhz BEAST with a WHOPPING 256MB of RAM... The Nexus One raised the bar and said no more to these pathetic clock speeds and measly amounts of RAM... THIS is what Android should run on! A 1Ghz Snapdragon processor with 512MB of RAM! Twice as powerful as almost everything else on the market at the time, the flagship Google phone paved the way (and the specifications) for a multitude of variants, including the Samsung Galaxy S, HTC Desire, and Motorola's Droid 2. There were also new sensors introduced and a whole pile of great stuff that really defined a new standard, that almost all manufacturers followed from thre on out, until recently.

The Galaxy S brought nothing new to the tabe. Well, that's unnecessarily harsh, it had NFC. The Galaxy S is the first major Android phone to include NFC. Despite this, the majority of the Galaxy S's hardware was nearly identical to the Samsung Galaxy S, from where it borrowed a portion of its name; with the obvious technical exception of NFC, which the Galaxy S was missing. They were both manufactured by Samsung, so the phones are practically identical. What's hilarious to me is that the Nexus One defined the standard by which the Galaxy S was based on, and the Nexus S was based on that. So you end up with a phone that's identical in almost every way.

To be fair, probably the biggest consumer-oriented change with the Nexus S was the move to internal NAND style memory, as opposed to the SDHC, External style found in the Nexus One. This memory is faster and more efficient than using an external SDHC card, with the obvious downside of not being able to be upgraded, and if something goes horribly wrong, anything saved on your phone, while that data may still be intact, is impossible to retrieve without special hardware.

The Galaxy Nexus has the same level of innovation that it is bringing to the market, as the Nexus One did. The Galaxy Nexus stands as a new standard for Android; it's a dual-core, 1.2Ghz System with 1GB of RAM. The phone also has all the usual sensors, aGPS, Gyro, Compass, light sensors, capactive multitouch, etc. and the same communication functions as the previous Nexus: NFC, Bluetooth, Wifi and Cellular. Though, it's notable that the Galaxy Nexus has an upgraded Wireless chip, capable of 802.11a/b/g/n - this indicates a dual-band chip (both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz, also a feature yet unseen in cellphone technologies). This has already spurred a whole line of new phones from every major manufacturer; from HTC: Sensation, Evo 3D, Amaze, etc. from Samsung: Galaxy S II and S II X. from Motorola: Atrix, Droid Razr, Droid 3, etc.

To put it briefly, I am not, and have never been a huge fan of the Nexus S. It was more popular than the Nexus One based on two merits: it was more widely available, many carriers actually sell the Nexus S in-store on contacts, making it faster and easier to get ahold of one than ever; the Nexus One, 9 times out of 10, you had to buy at full cost, no contract, from Google directly. Secondly, the Nexus S came out much later into Android's development, as a much more mature ( and much more popular ) platform, it was easy for the Nexus S to become as popular as it has become; despite not bringing much new to the table.

Why Google?

Many people have raised concerns about the trustworthiness of Google and all the services that google provides. I understand; in an age of information, and the open exploitation of people's personal information for gain and marketing, it can be hard to trust a corporation with anything.

There are also those that get very upset about the heuristic nature of google searching, which also, has merit.

I use google because I consider it to be trustworthy and the heuristic searching makes things significantly better, overall.

I'll explain. Have you ever read Google's service agreements? Neither have I. Honestly, I blow past them in a the blur of a new application faster than... well, it's fast. From what I've seen, Google requires your authorization to release your information to anyone for any reason. I mean, they ARE their own advertising agency (Adsense anyone?) so any information they've gathered on you (marketing-wise) is used to filter out advertisements that will not interest you.... eg. if you're constantly searching for product X, then google will show you ads regarding product X or it's competitors, retailers, accessories, etc. it will do this automatically, the people that made the advertisement, tell google, or google derives from their ad, what they're trying to sell, and their target market. If you're not in it, why would they show you that ad? It makes no marketing sense.

My point here is that advertisers come to google with an ad, a site to link it to, and a target market (demographic data) - google then shows the ad to people who fit that pattern of viewing, YOUR information never leaves google; with the possible exception of being part of a statistic, which I would consider to be fair. (eg, you're one of X people that google'd the new iphone... or whatever)

In addition to targetted ads, google can also figure out what you google'd and what site you went to, and if you came back to google after visiting the site. This gives google a very small idea as to whether or not the site is relevant to the search. obviously keywords and meta data is factored in, and for very unique searches, it definitely is, however, for very common stuff, there's SO MUCH data out there, and there's a lot of BAD or MISLEADING information on the internet... For example, let's say the website for a resturant, let's say, the Keg, since it's common, let's say the programmer didn't really add a lot of meta data, so the phrase "the keg" does not uniquely appear on the site in anything more than the URL, and perhaps .jpg references or something. That's not a lot to go on. but imagine a firm who's main job it is to sell vacations, and one of the big selling points at a more major destination is that they have a keg resturant. The marketing firm, selling vacations, is going to use "The Keg" in every way, shape and form, increasing that phrase's hit count when being indexed... imagine there's quite a few marketing firms like that..

Now imagine you google "The Keg" without heuristic data, it would be a mess. the keg's website would probably be on page 15 buried among coupon offers. However, with heuristic data included, google would logically factor out most of these sites, since many people who google "the keg" would visit them, thinking this is a way to get to the keg, or information on the keg, then be bombarded by not-keg-related material, go back to their search, and keep trying. The massive amount of returns from that site would indicate to google's search engine that maybe, this site is not as related to "the keg" as the meta data suggests.

Additionally, when people go to the ACTUAL Keg website, they end up going and not coming back, either they close the tab/browser, or they browse the site for a long time and likely never come back to google, since they found what they wanted... potentially coming back to do another search, but not for the same thing. This would indicate that maybe this site is more relevant than the metadata would suggest.

Obviously this is not actually a problem, since if you google "the keg", www.kegsteakhouse.com/ is the first link.

My point is, Google, time and time again, has given control to it's users. Even with Google+ it's easy to delete your entire profile and all related information. Or back it up. Or not. It doesn't matter. You can delete the pictures from your picasa web album, making them unavailable forevermore. You can delete their references on your G+ account. You have full access to tag, untag, delete, or edit any of your comments, or delete unwanted comments from your posts. Your information is yours, and google knows, and respects that.

Sure, one day, Google could go bad and become the next facebook (but much much worse), but as far as I'm concerned, that day, according to all the evidence so far, will never happen.

In addition to that, without the heuristic data they use, searching online would be less than useless. You would never reach any relevant data, and with information growing and expanding constantly, there's no way anything that's remotely useful now, that doesn't classify results by relevance based on user data, there's no way it will be useful for long.

I love google, and everything it provides. and as a disclaimer, that doesn't mean I think everyone else's products are bad, or not worthwhile, or should not be used/enjoyed.... I just prefer google myself, I think they're awesome, and I'm sure google does too. If you disagree, that's fine, you're just dead to me.

New celly

So the other day I decided to get myself an upgrade from my old Moto Milestone. I moved on up to the HTC Desire HD.

While there are other phones on the market in canada that are also very good, or even better (ergo, Moto Atrix), I'm not big on locked bootloaders. I am however, big on HTC Sense. I've only read all the great things about it.

Using my phone for only a few days, Sense is great. But I'm looking at the community seeing much room for improvement, since my carrier is historically bad for updates and there's a mostly stock 2.3.3 update floating around the community... So within a week, I switch my phone Eng S-Off and went ahead with the flashing, I couldn't be happier. It's amazing the amount of battery life improvements that google made, software side, between 2.2 and 2.3 simply amazing.

I chose a very stock rom to maintain HTC Sense and all the features in sense. I especially love Locations, where you can browse maps, offline. Which is amazing.

With this new knowlege, of flashing on HTC, I'm starting to take an interest in Android as a platform. I'm probably going to try to pick up some Java coding manuals, and get started on some apps. What I was hoping to ask, if I could, is if anyone wants to see an app that does not yet exist. The simpler the better. Has to be for Android. I'm looking for start-up projects to get me started learning the coding so that I can learn how, while producing something useful.

When posting please include your device, so I know what platforms I should expect to make the app work on.

I'll try to post again soon if I get some good ideas.

HTC EVO 3D

I just came across this little tidbit

http://youtu.be/JSuD45mRl_o

now, I have a lot of mixed feelings about the supposed "3D" technologies, but one outcry I keep hearing is how horrid they are for straining your eyes. Having products on the market, like 3D Televisions, and the Nintendo 3DS is bad enough, but they want to take something you use, all day, every day, and make it 3D? talk about eye strain.

Prescription glasses time.

I'm sorry HTC, but if you produce this, I will NEVER BUY IT.

as a side note, could you guys POSSIBLY, put out a newest generation cellphone (no 3D please), that has a dual-core 1+Ghz CPU and MORE THAN 512MB RAM, running android 2.2 or newer, that has a keyboard? possibly? please?

My moto milestone is getting dated.

Android

Dear Google,

I love your android operating system, but I have one, very serious, very important suggestion.

Not to assume I know any way to implement what I'm suggesting, or if it's even possible. Not at all. Nor would I suggest that Android is not the best mobile OS I've ever seen; I would never do such a thing.

In fact, Android is so good, that I'm already planning my next-new phone purchase, and limiting myself only to Androids. I've thoroughly enjoyed the system and will continue to do so.

Finally, before I get to my point, I'd like to say that I know you don't control the app community, you merely facilitate it, which is fine! We appreciate the centralized distribution of apps. It's great in fact, simply wonderful, that even someone programming Java out of their basement can put out something simple and entertaining.

My suggestion is: make application permissions variable. 90% of the time, 90% of permissions are not necessary. Prime example, why does an application like slice it (I've been picking on them) require GPS? If I put my phone into "airplane" mode, I'm sure the app will function just fine, without GPS or network access. Obviously some applications will simply fail if they don't, like Google Maps. This is why I would recommend to give the control back to the users. Rather than have it setup where you either accept whatever permissions they're requesting of you, or don't use the application, you can still install/use an application and deny it access to something like, your phone book, text messaging, phone ID, GPS and network location services, SD Card access, etc.

I don't believe it would be difficult to do, and you could even have it default to whatever permissions the application requests... maybe add a "change allowed permissions" type feature to the bottom of the market page when you go to install a new application.

I think all consumers understand that if you want to do geotagging on your facebook photos, you'll need to give the facebook for android application permission to read GPS, access the internet, and permission to use the camera. I think we get that.

As I'm sure you'll be ignoring our cries again, I'm sure this is all just wasted breath.

Some flexability would be nice though.

Try not to turn into Apple.

Thanks.
Bye.

Usage Based Billing

I had a few thoughts that I originally posted elsewhere and thought it would be a good addition here too.

I havn't updated in a while and this is relevant.

Canada has been undergoing some changes in the form of Usage Based Billing, aka, use more internet, pay more...
ON THE SURFACE, aka a consumer view, it's completely unfair to charge someone for a service they've been getting. eg, 200GB, or an Unlimited cap, etc.
but the reality of the situation, that most people don't know/understand, is that UBB has existed for a long time, not just on the client side. It's actually fairly standard practice in the business internet sector to always provide the fastest links possible and just charge for usage. This is mainly due to, when you need the data, you need it now, not 50 minutes from now, so transferring it as fast as possible increases productivity, but normally, you'll have to transfer that much data regardless.

In Hamilton, Burlington, and the west-side of the GTA, give Atria networks (formerly fibrewired) a call and ask them about their billing. Atria is the fiber provider that used to be part of the hydro-electric company, they're geared towards extreme high-speed (typically business) applications. I'm sure they'll have a flat fee for hookup and a set usage that they don't bill for, but after the usage "cap" you're paying by the GB.

Since Consumer based usage is on so much of a dramatic increase, with youtube, netflix, torrents and other peer-to-peer sharing becoming even more popular as we fill up the IPv4, it used to make sense to give out unlimited, since most customers would not use a lot of it, and they wouldn't really notice, and/or care that their super fast connection wasn't really being used.... while others would use it to an extreme level, everything used to balance out. Now, the usage has gone up so much that they're losing a lot of profit because of the bandwidth fees that the ISPs are incurring due to high usage from their customers and the smaller ISPs.

All this aside, I don't fully agree nor disagree with UBB (I disagree for obvious reasons, so I'll only discuss what I agree with). UBB would be written into the service agreement between (for example), bell and teksavvy. each would have to sign it saying that for service X from bell, that teksavvy will contribute X to bell (where the latter "X" here would usually be money). THAT agreement should either include or not include UBB. if it does not, and bell applies it to the agreement without first re-negotiating with Teksavvy, then bell should be taken to court for breach of contract. This goes double for Bell's capping of "GAS" customer's p2p traffic. If they want to do it to their own customers, fine, but if those customers switch to Teksavvy, then Teksavvy should have a contract stating that they shouldn't be capped like they would be on Bell.
The distribution network is OWNED by Bell here, and as their property, they can police it as they wish. To me, this is no different than hiring security guards to keep your property safe. You set the rules and policies that the guards have to abide, then send them out to protect the land. If anyone trespasses or breaks some arbitrary rule that you've set fourth, then the guards should spring into action, protecting your land from usage other than what you permit.

The dilemma I have with this is that the lines used for the DSL distribution network that Bell is policing, is public property, has been for quite some time. This is why we have choices when it comes to home phones... The switched network is public, bell just maintains it. They established it, they know everything about it, so that just makes sense.

With your Cable providers, whether it's Rogers, Cogeco, or otherwise, they own the cable lines into your house, so they can regulate what goes on there too. AFAIK, those are NOT public property, so we're all focused on bell, rather than rogers or cogeco.
In the end I'm torn, because all of this makes sense, but I hate UBB just like everyone else. But I can't deny the fact that I can see both sides of this argument. I really hope UBB is regulated, because the current laws allow for the consumer, who doesn't have many good options, to be completely ripped off by the companies that provide internet. I can understand UBB, but at a reasonable level. Teksavvy had some overly generous levels, but they were better than overly restrictive (as bell has).

Anti-virus hoax

The Antivirus hoax is one that I think infects all layers of antiviral software, both legitimate and non.

Hello folks, sorry I havn't posted in a while. Seems tonight is an insomnia night so I thought I'd update you all based on some observations in the past few days.

It's no secret that I work with the public, on their computers, and often when they become infected with malware/virii. The customers I've dealt with have had just about every antivirus program under the sun. Everything from McAfee, to Norton, to AVG (the paid version)... the list goes on and on. At work, our systems use Nod32, so everything is in the mix. I still have yet to see anything that would remotely constitute a "good" antivirus.

Internet Explorer's best-known trait is that it's vulnerable. A program can install itself by ActiveX almost always without the user's knowledge or permission. A lot of my customers use IE. I use IE at work because some of our software only works correctly in IE. An interesting thing happened today, but first, some background.

Many of the recent virus programs (or malware if you insist), are part of a new trend called "rogue antivirus". We've seen a few of these, including Security Tool 2011, Thinkpoint, and Palladium, to name a few. All pose as Antiviral software, proporting to be internationally renowned as excellent software (usually "worlds leading antivirus" or something like that), all of which ask for a payment for services (usually around $80), to fix the supposed issues on your system. Fact is, the issues don't exist, the program is a fraud, and paying for it won't change a thing...

These Rogues get onto your computer by very crafty webpages that utilize a large amount of Javascript to animate, what looks to be, a Windows Explorer, showing several infections in shared folders, local disks, etc. with very convincing progress bars and the sort. To the untrained eye, a prompt like this represents a huge problem, and any attempts to close it are met by a prompt asking if you're sure you want to 'navigate away' from the page, and often, the page will re-open itself when closed. To the trained eye, this is an obvious fraud, and should be destroyed with great Prejudice.

Well, while googling something for a customer early this morning (now yesterday morning), I came across one of these pages, hosted from an IP, and "impossible" to close. My first instinct was to destroy it, however, if I killed IE, half the pages I needed to perform my job would go away too, so I opted to block the site... with the URL clearly visible, I opened Internet Options and added the IP to the list of restricted sites... after a short bout of trying to refresh the page, it returned with a blank page (all scripts were blocked, so no content was showing)... interesting, I can now painlessly close the page and return to work.

I decide to check something, so I remove the restriction, and refresh the page. I select to download whatever software they're pimping out, and save the file to the desktop. I ask Nod32 to scan it... 2 files scanned, 0 viruses.

Interesting.

I'm certain the situation would be the same for Norton, McAfee, AVG, Trend... the list goes on.

I renamed the file to "THIS IS A VIRUS.exe" and left it on my desktop, now in my roaming profile. I'll see how long it will be until the file get's picked up. My guess is at least 3-4 weeks, if ever.

All antivirus software is like this. The majority of the time people just keep eliminating the virus and the SOURCE of the virus just moves on and stops hosting the old virus... so it goes away... this is more likely to happen than a definition being put out that will actually stop the software from infecting your computer.

I havn't used an Antivirus in many years on any of my main PCs, in my humble opinion, they're useless. Knowing when to close a browser window and knowing when to deny a UAC prompt is about a million times more useful than any antivirus.

User education over user protection. Unfortunately, not many users want to learn, they just want their farmville.