Summary: This is where the rubber meets the road with Windows Phone. We take a selection of regularly-used apps and see whether Windows Phone can provide similar functions. The results may surprise you! By David Gewirtz for DIY-IT |
About a month ago, in the beginning of July, I began an evaluation of Windows Phone. I've long been an iPhone and Android user, but had no experience with Windows Phone. I reached out to Microsoft, and they provided me with a Lumia Icon to use for my review.
In previous articles, I described my first impressions. There is no doubt the device is a sweet phone. But the big question in my mind is also probably the single biggest negative Microsoft has to deal with in marketing Windows Phone: the app gap. Compared to the iOS app store and Google Play, Windows Phone has just a fragment of the apps.
What I wanted to find out was whether that mattered in real, day-to-day use.
Before I used a Windows Phone device for the first time (and mine is upgraded to 8.1 with the latest updates), I set out a list of app requirements based on my day-to-day use of my Android Phone, a Samsung Galaxy S4 that's under contract until next year.
Each of these requirements reflects my daily usage pattern for the phone. My feeling was that if I could do pretty much the same stuff on a Windows Phone, then it would pass the app challenge. But if I was unable to get the same productivity out of Windows Phone as I could with either iOS or Android, it would fail the challenge.
Grading scale
To evaluate the app challenge, I set out 19 requirements in my initial article. Windows Phone will be graded on a 0 to 5 scale for each requirement. Those of you math wizards in the audience will notice that 19-times-5 is 95, so to bring the scale up to 100, I'll give Windows Phone an initial 5 points just for plucky competitive spirit.
Finally, I'll report a final grade from F to A, according to the same numerical grading scale I use with my students:
One other thing. In terms of scoring, I'll be judging on two levels. First is functionality. Can the phone get the job done? Second is whether it can be done nicely.
What do I mean by this? Let's say I was handed the phone and had to use it for some reason instead of the S4. Could I get my work done, regardless of whether or not the interface was pleasant or just workable? Was I just plain out of luck? I will award 0-3 points for functionality.
The usability requirement is really a question of how elegantly it's done. Is it a pain in the neck to use? Do I have to resort to loading a Web page instead of an app? Is it a slick, clean user interface that's a pleasure to use. I will award 0-2 points for usability.
Now that you understand the rules of the challenge, let's get started with our first requirement. Good luck to everyone!
Let the challenge begin
All my phones use inductive charging. Can the Windows Phone?
It most certainly does. In fact, unlike the iPhone, which needs a brick-like sleeve and the Galaxy, which has a charging back that doesn't fit most cases, the Lumia Icon has inductive charging built in. There's no bulge. There's no muss. No fuss. This is how inductive charging should be done.
Functionality on 0-3 scale: 3
Usability on a 0-2 scale: 2
By contrast, I'd award both the iPhone and Android phone 2s for functionality. You can do inductive charging, if you buy add-ons. On the other hand, I'd award a sad 0 for usability for the iPhone. You need to attach a brick to it. I'd give a 1 to the Android phone because it then becomes incompatible with most cases, but at least it's not a brick.
Can I connect to both my email and my calendar? My email is Office 365 via Exchange and Outlook, but I live off of Google Calendar. Can I still manage my Google Calendar with this thing?
I had HUGE expectations for this. I expected the Windows Phone to integrate with my Office 365 account like butta. The phone even boots up with a friendly Office 365 icon right on the home screen. Excitedly, I tapped it, and ... well, huh? Where's my email?
I launched into the app, but there was no option to get my email. I could see my email attachments, but not my email. I pay $15/mo per user for Office 365, primarily for access to Exchange, but there was no email in the Office 365 app. 'Scuse me?
Where's my email?
As it turns out, if you exit the Office 365 app and go back to the home screen, there's a quarter-size icon (one quarter the size of the Office 365 icon) with an envelope on it. If you tap that, you can sign into your Office 365 email and get the relatively pleasant Outlook interface.
Why Microsoft? Why?
So, yes, you can access your Office 365 email from Windows Phone. But not only was it not integrated like butta, it was a completely separate icon with no connection whatsoever (except for seeing attachments -- bizarre on its own) to the Office 365 app.
This is where Microsoft baffles me. This was such a no-need-to-bungle opportunity to shine bright, but instead, sigh, no joy.
As for my Google Calendar, the good news is you can integrate the Google Calendar (including multiple individual calendars). It gets the job done. On the other hand, the month view of Google Calendar on the Windows Phone (and presumably the month view for Exchange) is nothing short of useless.
Windows Phone vs. Android
As you can see, the image on the left is from the month view of Windows Phone. The image on the right is from my Android calendar. It has so much information, I had to blur the whole thing out to be able to post it. Even more powerful, one of my home screens on my Android Launcher shows this calendar view, so I never even have to open the calendar to see my month at-a-glance. That functionality just brutalizes not only Windows Phone, but iOS as well.
Office functionality for Windows Phone was tough to rate. I fully expected this to be a knock-out-of-the-park 5, and instead:
Functionality on 0-3 scale: 3
Usability on a 0-2 scale: 0
Once you get past the initial idiocy of the way the apps work, you can enlarge the email icon and using it is reasonably pleasant. Even so, I dinged the score because it was just such an unnecessary place for confusion and such a huge missed opportunity to showcase integration.
Lots more apps to come. Windows Phone picks up some much-needed points...
By the way, I'm doing more updates on Twitter and Facebook than ever before. Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz and on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz.
David Gewirtz, Distinguished Lecturer at CBS Interactive, is an author, U.S. policy advisor, and computer scientist. He is featured in the History Channel special The President's Book of Secrets and is a member of the National Press Club.
By Scott MattesonAugust 12, 2014, Find out how Google detected illegal activity on their systems and how they responded to the discovery.
The lines between good and bad don't get much clearer than this. It was recently reported that Google alerted the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) when they detected evidence of alleged child pornography being sent via a user's Gmail account. The NCMEC then contacted local police and the user, a Houston Texas resident previously convicted of sexual assault, was subsequently arrested after child pornography was found on devices that he owned.
Very few law-abiding citizens would object to such a measure, but nevertheless, the comments on various news sites, Facebook, and other sources began heating up almost immediately:
"This leads down a path that will end up eventually violating everyone's right to privacy." (Ryan Byers on theCNET.com Facebook page)
"The idea of privacy is an illusion. The big picture is that we are monitored and given the illusion of freedom." (Richard Ibah on the CNET.com Facebook page)
"I'm all for privacy, but the core of freedom is if it does not harm or infringe upon the rights of others." (Robert Riggs on the CNET.com Facebook page)
Most people reacted positively to Google's move, and the rest can largely be described as extreme privacy advocates who objected to Google "snooping" on people's email, or those concerned with false accusations (it bears repeating that further evidence was found in possession of the accused, confirming the police department's suspicions).
It's spelled right out in Google's Terms of Services, which state "You may use our Services only as permitted by law, including applicable export and re-export control laws and regulations. We may suspend or stop providing our Services to you if you do not comply with our terms or policies or if we are investigating suspected misconduct.... we may review content to determine whether it is illegal or violates our policies, and we may remove or refuse to display content that we reasonably believe violates our policies or the law."
Then there's Google's privacy policy, which informs users "We collect information to provide better services to all of our users -- from figuring out basic stuff like which language you speak, to more complex things like which ads you'll find most useful or the people who matter most to you online.... when you use our services or view content provided by Google, we may automatically collect and store certain information in server logs. This may include details of how you used our service, such as your search queries."
Furthermore, Google states "we will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Google if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request."
It's important to keep in mind the accused man in question was allegedly conducting illegal activities on services owned by Google. This is a far cry from the much less realistic threat that Google technicians could look at confidential business or personal information in a Gmail account and possibly leak details to someone else with malicious or financial intent (such as through blackmail).
In addition, Google is not the government -- it's a business. Nobody is forced to use its services. It would be one thing if the FBI required that all system administrators provide them with on-demand access to email databases and logs; the privacy outcry would be legitimate and valid.
Just how Google discovered the alleged criminal material isn't entirely clear, but an article that appeared on the Telegraph news site last year by David Drummond, the Chief Legal Officer of Google, states that Google is committed to finding and removing this material, and it hinted at the possibility of certain scanning algorithms "that trawl other platforms for known images" that are then verified as illegal content by human inspection. In other words, they don't have a spy assigned to each mail user to monitor what they're doing.
The privacy-first crowd usually makes valid points about topics similar to this, or at least they bring up issues worthy of consideration regarding the overstepping of big businesses, the danger in keeping confidential material on someone else's systems, and the unknown factor behind offsite data. However, this isn't one of those blurry areas of "Should they/should they not?" It involved illegal behavior that Google had a moral duty to prevent (especially since their systems were being misused). I, for one, salute Google for helping to protect the public.
Where do you stand on this issue?
Scott Matteson is a senior systems administrator and freelance technical writer who also performs consulting work for small organizations. He resides in the Greater Boston area with his wife and three children.
A woman was admitted to a psychiatric hospital after saying she believed that a famous actor was sending her coded messages via Twitter, according to a published research paper.
Does we make Twitter? Or does Twitter make us?Mashable/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET
It's almost a casual throwaway to describe those obsessed with social media as crazy.
Human behavior has seen radical shifts ever since noses were permanently pointed toward screens and lives began to be lived inside them.
One group of doctors, however, believes that social networks -- specifically Twitter -- can induce psychosis in those already predisposed to its effects.
The article describes a 31-year-old female patient who was admitted to Charité-Universitätsmedizin hospital in Berlin. She had no previous history of mental disorder. Suddenly, though, she was enveloped by a Twitter obsession.
She believed that a famous actor was sending her coded messages through the site.
As the Daily Dot reports, her symptom became extreme: "During the next couple of weeks, Mrs. C increasingly felt that the messages of other users were ‛meant in a symbolic way' and that she had to react to these 'tasks' in a certain manner."
Having taken on a belief in this Twitter symbolism, she then purportedly began to see the same symbols in her everyday surroundings.
Having looked at her case, the doctors posited that "the amount of symbolic language (caused by the limitation of 140 characters per Twitter message), the automated spam responses with seemingly related content, and the general interactive features of Twitter might combine several aspects that could induce or further aggravate psychosis."
All language, spoken or written carries symbolic meanings. It may be that for Mrs C. the particular language of Twitter, with its abbreviations, codes and even in-jokes, represented a world that resonated strongly with some predisposition already present in her.
It's not clear whether these doctors managed to deduce the core of her resonance. However, Mrs. C recovered after treatment and managed to release her Twitter bonds entirely.
Not everyone has the predisposition for such an extreme reaction. What if, though, we chose to step back from all those online behaviors that have become a habit? Would we become different people? Better people? Saner people?
Would we suddenly feel more connected, because we'd have more time to interact with others in a real-world way, rather than through a screen? Or would we feel deprived to the point of insanity?
It's worth more than one experiment, surely.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world.
Summary: Here's what to expect, feature-wise, when Microsoft rolls out its second update for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 on August 12, according to the company. By Mary Jo Foley for All About Microsoft |
A week ahead of availability of the second update for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft officials are sharing a list of what users should expect, feature-wise.
Up until a couple of months ago, Update 2 was going to include the new mini Start menu. But officials decided to postpone availability of that new Start Menu, as well as the ability to run windowed Metro-Style apps on the desktop, for Windows Threshold. (Threshold, a k a Windows 9, is due in the spring of 2015.)
Precision touchpad improvements: Three new end-user settings have been added: Leave touch pad on when a mouse is connected; allow right-clicks on the touchpad; double-tap and drag.
Miracast Receive: Exposes a set of Wi-Fi direct APIs for Independent Hardware Vendor (IHV) drivers or OEM drivers to develop Windows 32-bit applications that run on all supported x86-based or x64-based versions of Windows 8.1, enabling the computer as a Miracast receiver.
Minimizing login prompts for SharePoint Online: Reduces the number of prompts with federated use in accessing SharePoint Online sites. Users who select the "Keep me signed in" check box when logging on for the first time, won't see prompts for successive access to that SharePoint Online site.
Windows Server 2012 R2 users will get bug fixes that will improve infrastructural performance and reliability as part of Update 2. Officials said there will be no changes to system application programming interfaces (APIs), so applications should "just work" without the need for re-certification or re-validation.
For current Windows 8.1 consumers who have elected automatic updates, the Windows 8.1 Update 2 feature rollout will be gradual to ensure all customers receive the update in a timely manner. Those who wish to install the update ahead of automatic updates will be able to do so beginning August 12 manually via Windows Update.
The second Windows Server 2012 R2 update will be delivered automatically via Windows Update and optionally through Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). Enterprises can take the update anytime. Further details on the update will be available on August 12, according to company officials.
Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for 30 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related.
If 2013 was the year of the pickup, 2014 belongs to Jeeps. No other brand has gained so much traction in the U.S. this year.
From January through July, Fiat (F:IM) sold 392,390 Jeeps in North America, 44 percent more than in the same period last year. That was enough to rocket the American brand past Kia (000270:KS) and Dodge, its corporate cousin, to the No. 7 spot on a ranking by volume. At the moment, Jeep is right behind Hyundai(005380:KS) in terms of total vehicles sold.
Here’s a look at how that momentum stacks up against the other fastest-moving car badges.
Here’s the amazing thing: If all the car companies were to maintain this year’s pace (granted, a huge “if”), Jeep would become the best-selling vehicle brand in North America sometime in 2018, blowing past Ford (F) and its fleet of aluminum F150s.
That probably won’t happen, for plenty of reasons. Chief among them: Jeep’s recent sales boom has been spurred by new products. In particular, the new Cherokee made its debut in October and in a few short months has become almost as popular as its grander sibling.
There’s a limit to how much product proliferation a niche brand such as Jeep can pull off. Ford can do a hatchback or a coupe; Jeep can’t. (Though a Jeep pickup or a refreshed, wood-plated Wagoneer would probably do just fine.) That said, Fiat has one more gear in its Jeep acceleration plan: the Renegade model that it unveiled in Geneva this spring. Purists note that the vehicle will be more of a big Fiat than a baby Jeep—it’s being built in southern Italy—but that famous grill is still bolted on the front and buyers can get a vintage military gas can to strap on the back.
The Renegade will roll into U.S. dealerships by the end of this year. If it manages to win over U.S. buyers, it could tow the brand right into Honda (HMC) territory.
Stockis an associate editor for Businessweek.com. Twitter:@kyl
In a single two-hour courtroom session on Thursday morning — just in time for lunch — US District Judge Loretta Preska ruled on a case that has massive global implications for US technology giants.
It's not like there was much left in the wake of the Edward Snowden disclosures, which threw nine Silicon Valley giants under the global surveillance bus more than a year ago. But we were coming to a point where our collective trust levels in these companies, which are fighting for their right to disclose government data request figures, were slowly rising — at least in the US.
To the outside world, lack of trust was still a big issue. Particularly for Europe. As the closest continental friend to the US, there was a lot of work that needed to be done.
But as relations were beginning to improve, the US judiciary decided that, for the purposes of its own law enforcement and intelligence agencies, the world was its oyster and data stored outside of its jurisdiction was fair game.
US to Europe: We'll take what we want, when we want it
The US has a relatively long recent history of exercising its laws "extraterritorially" — from drone strikes in Pakistan to overseas military activities, and in recent times, the bulk acquisition of data from foreign (and often friendly) states for intelligence purposes.
So it's little wonder that with this collective mindset, Preska decided to make the world's data available to the US government, in spite of foreign nations' own judicial and legal regimes, supra-national fundamental values, and even public international law.
"Microsoft contends that courts in the United States are not authorized to issue warrants for extraterritorial search and seizure, and that this is such a warrant." — US Judge James Francis
The ruling on Thursday follows from an earlier lower court, in which U.S. Magistrate Judge James Francis in New York ruled that a search warrant can be applied outside the country.
The theory was that because Microsoft, named in this case, owned and controlled a foreign subsidiary company based in Dublin, Ireland, any data stored in its overseas offices or datacenters still fell within US territory — albeit loosely.
The official channels between countries that allow cross-border law enforcement operations to work, called mutual legal assistance treaties (MLAT), are "generally... slow and laborious," Francissaid in his ruling. He added that the "burden" on the US government to work with other nations would be "seriously impeded."
Naturally, Francis did what any US judge would do and put the US population — and the government — first and foremost. It's not his, or any other justice's job, to worry about the effects on other states or nations outside his jurisdiction.
Other major US technology and telecommunications giants lent a hand in the second stab at the case. Verizon submitted an amicus brief in Microsoft's support, concerned that its overseas data could also be at risk. Apple, AT&T, and Cisco also threw their weight behind the software giant.
But it's a surprise so few companies joined in, considering how the legal precedence of Preska's ruling would affect the entire US technology industry. When Preska was charged with handling the case, the burden landed on her shoulders to decide whether or not the US could legally (at least under its own jurisdiction) walk in to any foreign datacenter loosely associated with a US company and grab whatever data it wanted.
"It is a question of control, not a question of the location of that information," Preska said in the court ruling.
And so the verdict was set, at least until a higher court can take the case. Preska stayed the verdict until an appeal can be lodged, but the court had its say. Foreign data was as up-for-grabs as domestic data was.
It wasn't just a domestic case. The effects would hit the ceiling on a global scale. It was a very international problem.
Because Ireland is one of the 28 member states of the European Commission, the onus of responsibility for its laws falls between Dublin, and Brussels-based bureaucrats.
In a letter obtained by ZDNet, the EU justice chief hints at consequences to come for the U.S. government if European citizens were targeted by the NSA's PRISM program.
European law is relatively straightforward. Data must not leave Europe under any circumstances unless the country it's going to can guarantee the data will be treated as if it's still in Europe. Why? Because Europe's data protection and privacy rules, brought into force in 1995, are the strongest in the world. Any data held by a company in Europe still ultimately belongs to the citizen who generated it. A citizen can request access to his or her own data, and when it's no longer needed, it must be deleted.
That posed a problem for the US, which was at the time nurturing Silicon Valley-based startups, which would go on to be the technology giants who provide the services Europeans need — from business data, social networks, and websites dedicated to kitten pictures.
Europe's data protection and privacy rules led major technology companies to build local datacenters in Ireland, Singapore, Australia, and elsewhere. It was a two-fold win: data would be stored locally, and it would reach their customers faster — and in case of a massive facility failure, companies could "geocache" data so it can be pulled from other datacenters.
Because Europe realized Internet data still had to flow without being impeded, the Safe Harbor principles were introduced in order to create a channel between the two continents. These rules meant that US companies must promise to treat European data like it's still under European law, even when it's in their US datacenters.
If they fall foul of that, Europe can cut off the data supply. That could mean Facebook suddenly not working in the 28 member states. It's a worst case scenario, and largely unfeasible in this day and age, but those are the principles which the companies abide by.
It's not like this wasn't happening already
The US didn't always play fair, as the NSA disclosures proved.
The US government has for years, according to documents leaked by Snowden, allowed the NSA and other US intelligence and law enforcement agencies to bypass MLAT and swipe the data it wanted or needed using existing US laws.
Remember the Patriot Act? The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act? Both are crucial weapons in the NSA's arsenal because they can force the handover of overseas and domestic data and gag the companies from saying anything.
EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, charged with protecting the data protection and privacy rights of more than 500 million Europeans, went nuclear at her American counterparts when the PRISM scandal broke. And for good reasons. She wasn't naive to think that friends don't spy on each other, but the scope in which the US was snooping on her fellow countrymen was far beyond anyone's expectations.
Reding said in the wake of the Snowden scandal that the US government must use the official MLAT channels if they want data in Europe.
But now, thanks to Preska's latest ruling, the US government has yet another legal backup line to use in order to grab what it wants, when it wants it.
There goes the global neighborhood
Questions remain over what happens next.
Some have called for Europe to take affirmative action. Remember Safe Harbor? Suspend it, say some. Data must flow, but not to a country that uses your data for its global data mining needs.
The US government and the European Union may have to hash it out in the so-called World Court. Formally known as The International Court of Justice, it's where governments take other governments to court, and remains the final arbiter of disputes between nation states.
European officials haven't ruled it out. But for now, there's little push from global governments, let alone the international court, to act. And at any rate, the US pulled out from the court's compulsory jurisdiction in the late 1980's, forcing any issue to be brought up at the United Nations — if any state cares that much.
As for you? If you're based in the US, you may enjoy the freedom and the protections of the constitution. But you also know the risks (and are making the conscious decision) to live there.
As for the vast majority of foreigners not living in the US? The bottom line is simple, and it's a question rather than a statement.
Based on this ruling, why should you ever trust a US technology company again?
Zack Whittaker writes for ZDNet, CNET, and CBS News. He is based in New York City.
Alguien expresaba con cierto desasosiego y
frustración “No puedo controlar los pensamientos de impulsividad que llegan a
mi mente, ni las equivocadas acciones de violencia que proceden a ellos”.
Guacala, diríamos puesto que este “pizco” encarna nada más ni nada menos que
los caracteres que se incluyen en los problemas con el manejo de la ira, los cuáles
han llevado a los afectados a cometer locuras, y a los sufrientes de ello, a
situaciones muy dolorosas y a veces hasta mortales.
Sin embargo esto se puede modificar
favorablemente cuando los protagonistas llegan a la conclusión de que si se
pueden controlar las acciones consecuentes, cuando dentro de un cambio de
hábitos mentales y de acción, logran tornar la ira, la agresividad y el
resentimiento, por componentes sanos de
amor y aceptación, lográndose con ello una modificación en aquello que
tanto daño hace.
Cuando así se procede y logramos
cuestionar nuestros pensamientos y actos, no de una manera juzgativa o
victimizante, sino por el contrario asertiva y sanamente critica, estaremos de
camino a la anhelada solución para tan complicada manera de proceder.
