A lot of cool stuff came out of Google I/O last week. Let’s take a quick look at some of them in this sweet two-part series.

Google I/O is Google’s big annual developer bash. Like Microsoft Build and Apple’s WWDC, Google I/O is designed to showcase Google’s latest goodies and achievements. The idea is to attract new developers to use the new features and functionality that will in turn attract more consumer and enterprise customers to the Google side of the mobile world.

This year, Google rolled out a number of new developments in both the desktop and mobile platform spaces. Over the next couple of days, I’m going to highlight some interesting developments from both areas and try to show you where you might find value for yourself. Today, we’re going to concentrate on the desktop.

Desktop Developments

Quick Actions in Gmail
When you get an actionable email message from someone, don’t be surprised when you can act on the item from right within Gmail. Google is rolling out Quick Action buttons that show up next to actionable items. For example, you’ll be able to RSVP for events from within the invite. Flight information will also be a featured action. Its Google’s intention to solicit their developer partners for ideas on additional buttons.

Gmail Payments
Send money via email, just like PayPal, only its Google Wallet. If you have a Google Wallet account, you can send money to anyone else with an email address. They don’t have to have Gmail, but will have to have a Wallet account.

This is nearly the EXACT same model as PayPal, which BTW, does pretty well. Like their other “me too” app Google+, which competes directly with Facebook, I expect this to have the same amount of success. People may give it a shot to see how well it does or doesn’t work, but then will either revert back to their PayPal account or simply abandon it entirely. Google’s been trying to get into the payments game for a while now with NFC and Google Wallet, It hasn’t had a lot of luck, and I don’t see Gmail Payments providing them with any kind of competitive advantage over the very well established and widely accepted PayPal.

Voice-Powered Desktop Search
This new development is meant to compete directly with Apple’s Siri. It’s been rumored that Apple would be bringing Siri to the desktop in Mountain Lion, but that update never materialized. While many Apple users are still looking for it, Google beat them to the punch with the introduction of conversational, voice powered desktop search. I would expect to see this as part of most Chromebooks as well as an extension available via Google’s Chrome browser.

Google Now Cards – Cool Reminders
This is another feature that catches up to Apple Reminders. Supporting both time and date, Google added geo-fencing to Now’s reminders. You can get a reminder to trigger in Google Now when you arrive or leave a specific geographic location.

Geo-fencing has been a bit of an issue for Apple, and the feature doesn’t work as intended. At least I’ve never been able to have it work correctly. Hopefully Google’s vast experience with Maps will help it better trigger these events and its performance will be much better than Apple Reminders’; cuz it kinda sucks…

Streaming Music Service – All Access
This is yet another area where Google beat Apple to the punch. Apple’s iRadio has been rumored to be in the works for a few years now. Unfortunately, the much anticipated and much sought after service has not materialized behind Apple’s Walled Garden of content and services.

I’m not sure how Google pulled it off, but they got to the party first with All Access. For about $10 bucks a month, you can stream “millions” of songs out of the Google Play Store or your own Google Music library. Available in the US now (and other countries in the coming months), users get a 30 day free trial with the service billed automatically after that. If you signup before 30-Jul-2013, you get the service for $8 bucks.

If you plan to use the service and don’t have a fat data plan, you better make a trip over to your cell carrier of choice and make sure you’ve got the bandwidth to support the service. Usually those people who use other streaming services like Pandora or Rdio find that once they start, they can’t stop. This is a huge win for Google as the new service works on the desktop as well as your mobile device. Hopefully, as details of the fine print come to light, we’ll find that it’s worth the cost.

Come back next time, as we’ll dive into some cool mobile developments that came out of Google I/O. It may be that the best is yet to come!

Related Posts:

• Fast and Fluid Future at Mobile World Congress 2012
• Navigating the Mobile Landscape: Ecosystems #2
• Google Wallet has been officially launched in the States
• RunKeeper – Your personal fitness trainer.
• Macroscop – interactive medical infographic based on Google searches

Online video streaming is one of the more popular ways to get content to the mobile device of your choice.  However, it’s not all sunshine and daisies.  DRM issues aside, sometimes, you’re not allowed to view certain content due to your geographical region.  When you bump into this type of problem, you should take a look at Hola Unblocker. It’s a web extension for use on Windows machines.

Hola Unblocker has been available as a Chrome and Firefox extension since December 2012. It has recently been expanded to include websites like CBC, Fox and BBC’s iPlayer TV. All you have to do is installing the extension, and then go to the website with the region-blocked content you want to access. You don’t have to restart your computer.  You don’t even have to restart your browser. The main difference between Hola Unblocker and other VPN/proxy services that we’ve found so far is its ability to unblock content without slowing everything down.

There have been some reports of the extension suddenly not working on a particular site, as well as a few glitches here and there. The developer indicates that BBC iPlayer TV worked in Chrome, but not in Firefox. Hulu also worked as advertised. The software is still technically in beta as of this writing, everything seems to be working as designed.

download Hola Unblocker

Related Posts:

• HMA! Pro VPN will hide your Internet activity for real
• Run a guest OS on your PC with VMware Workstation
• Keep your web surfing habits private with Ultrasurf
• Create and manage virtual machines with Paragon’s Virtualization Manager 12 Professional
• Make Internet apps run even through your office network

If you’re using Office 2008 for Mac, you may want to look at alternatives…

If you’re using Office 2008 for Mac, you may or may not be aware that the product officially went out of active support on 09-Apr-2013. That means that Microsoft is no longer going to provide updates, security patches and fixes to the software. However, don’t panic.

The software is still usable. You can continue to use the software as long as you wish. HOWEVER, in a connected world, the likelihood that you’ll catch a a virus, worm or other malware targeted at Office 2008 users drastically increases.

There are a couple of alternatives, including subscription, pay and free options.

• Upgrade to Office 2011 for Mac

Office 2011 for Mac is equivalent to Office 2010 for Windows and will be supported by Microsoft until 12-Jan-2016

• Purchase an Office 365 Subscription

If you have more than one compatible computer in your house that needs access to Office, an Office 365 subscription allows you to install Office on up to 5 different computers, either Windows PC’s or Macs. This will get you Office 2011 for Mac today and allow you to upgrade later.

• Switch to OpenOffice.org or to LibreOffice

Both of these are decent office replacements and both are free. Both provide decent alternatives and offer a general sense of compatibility to Microsoft Office. More complex formatting, however, may not survive revisions in one of these alternatives AND MS Office, so don’t be surprised if your elaborate tables or other figures get wonky after saving in one, the other, or both.

A new version of Office for Mac is expected either later in 2013, or early in 2014.

Related Posts:

• Free alternatives to Microsoft Office
• Last week’s highlights #3
• Smaller MS Surface – What it Needs to Succeed
• More Noise about WinRT – Microsoft Getting in its Own Way
• Will Microsoft do a Redo with Windows Blue?

Enough already, will ya?!  I want interoperability!

Attention computer vendors everywhere – I use your software tool it because it solves problems for me, not because it makes you money, or it looks cool, or any other reason other than it solves problems for me. So when you either don’t allow something to work OR if you reduce functionality – i.e. make something stop working that was previously working before, all you’re going to do in the long term is lose a customer.

Case in point – the latest update to the Mail, Calendar and People ModernUI app in Windows 8 removes Google Accounts from its syncable and supported accounts list. This is driving me nuts, because I spent a good 3 years in the Android camp before switching back to my iPhone. Unfortunately for me, my “master PIM account” is my Google Apps account.

This is a problem in an iPhone world because Google and Apple don’t’ work and play well together as they used to do. Both companies are busy having a “smartphone measuring” contest, trying to figure out whose smartphone is bigger, better, faster, etc.

I’ve got the same problem with Google and Microsoft over in the Windows 8 camp. Google recently removed Exchange ActiveSync support from its Google Apps suite. If you’re using a non-Google tool to sync PIM data, you may soon be out of luck. What this means is that if you have an Android Smartphone and a Windows 8 tablet, you can’t sync your contacts from Gmail to your Windows 8 tablet with Windows 8 Mail. An email program without your contacts in it is useless.

If you have an iPhone, you might be able to use CardDAV and CalDAV, but…oh yeah… Windows 8 doesn’t support those either. Apple is also dropping support of EAS from Mail.

So what we have here is a RETURN to the non-interoperability of 2007-2009 before both Google and Apple announced support for Exchange ActiveSync and everybody worked and played nice together.

From a vendor perspective, this is Google, Apple and Microsoft trying to lock users into their paid services. From a consumer perspective, this is a giant pain in the @$$.

Now, more than ever, until everyone decides that it’s politically correct to work and play well together, consumers must pick and choose their tools wisely. If you want all of your information to sync where and when you want it, you’re likely going to have to choose compatible tools.

In other words, due to the fact that it’s becoming increasingly harder to use off-vendor devices and service together, you aren’t going to be able to mix and match devices any longer. If you want to use an iPhone, you’re likely going to have to work with a Mac computer and an iPad tablet. If you have an Android smartphone, you’re going to be tied to Gmail/Google Apps and an Android tablet. Same thing for Windows Phone and Windows 8/RT.

All of these vendors have software and SaaS products to sell you and they want to insure that they hook you, and keep you in THEIR camp, in THEIR ecosystem. This is going to do nothing more than widen the gaps between vendors, their services and tools and firmly draw lines in the sand that users are going to have to cross.

This is going to create some very interesting opportunities for 3rd party developers who might be able to setup sync and consolidation services – think The Missing Sync and Plaxo – but both of those are having their own issues and problems to get around. All of this may do nothing more than narrow and eliminate choices for users as vendors like MS, Google and Apple try to lock them in. it’s going to be an interesting couple of years before this is all worked out. We may end up back with interoperability, but don’t think that it’s going to be for free… if it comes back, users are going to pay subscription and licensing fees.

Related Posts:

• Is Convergence the Way to Go?
• 2011 Gift Guide Part 1 – OK, Great! Now What Should I Buy?
• Nokia Windows 8 tablet to hit the stores in early 2012
• Windows 8 – Dual Mode UI Dichotomy
• Fast and Fluid Future at Mobile World Congress 2012

Recover data from removable media with this must have Mac utility.

Keeping your data safe is a complicated task. You can back up all you want, but if something gets erased, that change may perpetuate to all of your backups and THEN what do you do. Data recovery apps are an important tool to have after a backup program. I’ve looked at a number of different apps, and if you have a Mac, then you will want to take a long hard look at AppleXsoft Photo Recovery. It’s an important data recovery tool for Mac.

AppleXsoft Photo Recovery is an all-in-one digital media data recovery app for Mac users. The software features innovative recovery algorithms that are designed to recover images, documents, video, audio, music or just about any other file that can be written to a digital media device. Its compatible with Memory Sticks, SD Cards, CompactFlash I & II, MMC, SmartMedia, xD Cards, Micro Drives, and PCMCIA cards, etc.

Running AppleXsoft Photo Recovery is simple as inserting your digital media into its reader and running Photo Recovery for Mac. You’ll be able to save your pictures or other data off to another location. Regardless of how the media was destroyed, whether files were deleted, corrupted or the media formatted, Photo Recovery for Mac should be able to recover the data.

Recovering deleted or missing data is important. When photos get inadvertently deleted, getting them back can be a nerve wracking and harrowing experience. Having an easy to use, simple application like AppleXsoft Photo Recovery for Mac can be a huge plus. The only thing that you have to understand about data recovery is that most data is recoverable unless the space where the file lived is now being used by another file. When that happens the likely hood of your being able to successfully recover your data dramatically decreases, regardless of the app you use to recover the data.

download AppleXsoft Photo Recovery for Mac

Related Posts:

• Apple to Acquire Waze..? NOT!
• Mountain Lion Day
• OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Developer Preview 3
• The Problem with Apple’s Secrecy
• CopyTrans Suite – a set of apps to replace iTunes and manage your iPod or iPhone

Back in the day, text based applications were all the rage, largely because graphics adapters hadn’t really seen a lot of innovation yet. At the time, there were some really powerful productivity apps like Dbase and WordPerfect for DOS that did a great job but weren’t very sexy.  Using older software like that isn’t always possible with today’s much faster, much more sophisticated computers. This is why I like DOSBox DOS Emulator.  It’s a cool Windows utility.

DOSBox is a DOS-emulator that uses the SDL-library.  This makes it very easy to access and port DOS based applications to other platform use. You can use DOSBox not only on Windows, but on BeOS, Linux, MacOS X to name a few.

DOSBox emulates an Intel compatible 286/386 processor PC in both real mode and protected modes, It supports Directory File System/XMS/EMS, Tandy/Hercules/CGA/EGA/VGA/VESA graphics and a SoundBlaster/Gravis Ultra Sound card for excellent sound compatibility with older games.  Provided you have access to drives that can read older media types – 5.25″ and 3.5″ floppies, for example: – you can use the app to run just about any DOS based application you can get your digital hands on.

The application is interesting to say the least.  Finding applications that are still accessible isn’t easy, but you can check the app’s home page and its Compatiblity page for a list of games and apps that you might be able to find download links for.  The application is free; and you may be required to roll up your sleeves and dig into the command prompt a bit in order to get the most value out of it.  In today’s modern computing environments, those not comfortable with Terminal or the Windows Command Prompt may find DOSBox DOS Emulator a bit intimidating.

download DOSBox DOS Emulator

Related Posts:

• Format any USB stick with the desired file system using HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
• Run your favorite Android Apps and Games on a Windows PC or Mac
• Read and backup data from scratched CD/DVD/Blu-ray discs with AnyReader
• JPCSP – The Java PSP Emulator
• Google Android Platform will be optimized for Intel Architecture

As with any OS update, confusion and issues are popping up with Apple’s release of iOS 6.1

As a member of Apple’s iOS Developer Program I was made aware of their rare weekend beta 5 release of iOS 6.1. The release, among other things was supposed to help resolve issues with Apple Maps as well as a few other issues. The update officially addressed the following:
LTE support for more carriers
Purchase movie tickets through Fandango with Siri (USA only)
iTunes Match subscribers can now download individual songs from iCloud
New button to reset the Advertising identifier
The full release notes can be found here. Where the API updates for Apple Maps, originally made available to developers on 28-Jan-13, one of the original components thought to be a part of this update are, no one knows. As you can see above, the official release notes make no mention of it. Though honestly, that’s a developer feature and not something that many consumers might understand the value in.

Apple recently had said that “many updates” to Maps have already been “released.”  The reason why you haven’t heard anything about them is because the “updates” weren’t programmatic. They were data related.

So, you “got” the most recent Maps “update” when you downloaded the map data as you were navigating from A to B or searching for “X marks the spot”.  Apple doesn’t normally tout data updates like this, so you never would have known, if Apple Maps and its data wasn’t such a freakin’ train wreck to begin with…

iOS 6 also introduced the Advertising Identifier. This non-permanent, non-personal hardware identifier is used by advertisers to track users. iOS 6 gives you the ability to control this with an On/Off button at Settings-General-About-Advertising. iOS6 introduced the switch. iOS 6.1 introduced a way to reset the identifier. Its effectively the same thing as clearing out your browser history and cookies on your Mac or PC. It’s really as simple as that.

It seems as though iPod Touch users are also experiencing issues related to iOS 6.1 The latest report from Apple Insider indicates that “iTouch” users are having problems downloading the update. When they try to pull the update down, many are receiving an error message stating that their “iTouch” isn’t connected to the internet and the update “failed verification,” even though they appear to have a strongly connected device. According to Apple Insider, this issue was encountered during Saturday’s beta 5 release as well.

From what TeamBYTE sees out of this update, some of us aren’t entirely certain the update warrants a full point upgrade. There’s something going on over at Apple related to software development. They wanted to take a longer time with iOS 6.1, and they did. Beta 1 was released in November 2012. However, as a seasoned and experienced software development and testing professional, its clear to me that Apple needs to do more in this area; or at the very least needs to market the update a bit better.

The “need” for this update was the sucky release of Apple Maps. If Apple’s iOS 6.1 update didn’t resolve this, they need to say something about how and when they will address it. Appearing more proactive than they are here can only help them. Ignoring the issue – mashing it down into a hard, cold little ball in the pit of your stomach isn’t going to make you forget that the app sucks or that there’s a huge disconnect between what I’m searching for, and how I want my iPhone to take me there.

Related Posts:

• Industry In-Fighting is Really Starting to Tick Me Off
• RAD Software Development – For when Management Wants it Bad
• Ballmer – Office for iPad – Kinda, sorta, maybe, not really…
• The Apple & Samsung Trial Results – My Take Now that the Jury is In
• I’m having a Bad Apple Day

Apple has always advocated letting the OS and the device (computer, smartphone, tablet, etc.) manage where it wants to put files. Many Apple advocates continually ask me why I care WHERE the computer puts data as long as its, 1. Backed up, 2. Available to my programs. The Windows Camp, coming from a DOS point of origin, is exactly the opposite. Serious Windows users want near total control over where and how their data is organized. This is one of the reasons why many Windows users will appreciate i-Funbox. Its an iDevice tool for Windows and Mac.

i-Funbox allows users to take Total Control of you iDevice’s file system. With it, you can manage files on your iPhone or iPad just like you do in Windows File Explorer. You can easily transmit files and folders to your computer with the app’s optimized file transfer and browsing. I-Funbox now fully supports iOS 6.x as well as Asian/ Long filenames.

You can install and backup all of your applications, This is especially important if you’ve got a custom app that you want to install, like something for work, which may be unsigned. You can also access an app’s sandbox area, giving you access to application created documents as well as the ability to upload audio or video to 3rd party players. You can also export iTunes managed content. The nicest part of all of this is that using the app doesn’t require an installation of iTunes.

The secret sauce is that i-Funbox makes your iDevice function like a USB storage drive. You get access to the storage you need when you need it, as well as all the other benefits. This is a great app and its free price tag, no jailbreak or iTunes required status make this a must have for just about any iDevice owner. Novice users need to take caution, however, as the average user isn’t meant to access the file system directly and you might move or delete something that you shouldn’t.

Download i-Funbox for Windows | Download i-Funbox for Mac

Related Posts:

• The Problem with Apple’s Secrecy
• Is Convergence the Way to Go?
• Lightroomapps brings big improvements to their GoDocs for Google Docs
• iPad 3 Rumor Roundup
• iPad 3 Rumors & Thoughts – Part 1: Hardware