The rumors were true. Google has acquired Waze.

Google announced on Tuesday 11-Jun-2013 that it had acquired Israeli crowd-sourced GPS app provider Waze in what is rumored to be a $1.0B buy-out.  Rumors of an acquisition of Waze have been circulating since the beginning of 2013 with suitors including both Apple and Facebook, as well as Google rumored to be in the running.

Waze has over 40 million users as of April 2013 and is a free, cross platform application that uses crowd-sourced data to provide information on traffic, accidents, speed traps as well as validation of maps for voice-guided GPS directions.

Waze’s acquisition will strengthen Google Maps as well as provide additional ad-based revenue. Both Apple and Facebook were interested in the app in order to strengthen and provide a mapping solution for their users, respectively.  Apparently, the future location of the acquired resources – currently Israel – was a point of contention in the failed negotiations. With its acquisition, development staff currently in Israel can stay there, at least for now.

Personally, while this is likely to strengthen Google Maps, its already a strong, mature product. While the rumors around an Apple acquisition of Waze turned out to be inaccurate, that result really is somewhat disappointing.  Apple Maps could use some help or at least could use a marketing shot in the arm that an acquisition like this could have given it.

In the end, this is probably the best result that could have happened for Waze.  An acquisition by Apple would have totally cannibalized the app, leaving little to nothing of its original form left. An acquisition by Facebook would have done absolutely nothing but ruined the app, service and community that Waze has worked so hard to build.

File this under “watch for further developments,” kids. I really think some interesting things are going to happen with Google Maps as a result; but as always, only time will tell…

Related Posts:

• Apple to Acquire Waze..? NOT!
• Google I/O – The Cool Stuff: Part 2
• Google I/O – The Cool Stuff: Part 1
• Macroscop – interactive medical infographic based on Google searches
• Industry In-Fighting is Really Starting to Tick Me Off

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 mobile.

Mobile Developments

Galaxy S4 with Stock Android
Google has chosen the latest Samsun Galaxy S phone, as its Nexus phone and will offer a version of the S4 with a vanilla version of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. The phone is scheduled to cost a steep $649 for an unlocked version of the device which should work on any GSM carrier.

Enhanced Google Maps
Google Maps has pretty much set the standard for a maps on demand GPS solution, at least in the Android part of the world. If you have an Android device, you have Google Maps; and as long as you live in an area with decent cell coverage, there’s no need to look for or use any other navigation solution.

As part of I/O, Google announced that it will be rolling out updates to maps that make searching larger maps more personal. Using technology that powers Google Now, Maps learns what your searching for and future results will get better the more it’s used.

Auto Enhance
Most people use point and shoot cameras to take digital photos vs. those that use DSLR’s. Most of those point and shoot cameras are actually cellphones. Digital camera technology has come a long way in the past few years with many cellphone camera specs rivaling those of dedicated point and shoot models. Your cellphone is most always with you , too.

Google is introducing Auto Enhance, a tool that offers users a way to improve brightness, contrast, saturation, structure, noise, focus and a number of other photo attributes automatically. The tool allows you to upload photos and to open a light box to see what Google improved for you.

Google+ Hangouts App
Google+ Hangouts offer members a virtual gathering place where they can chat, discuss and congregate with other members. Hangouts are often used for podcasting and live shows, sharing files and photos; but are also used for collaborative work.

Google has announced the release of a standalone application for Hangouts that works across Android, iOS and the desktop. Gmail users can now replace GChat with Hangouts. All they have to do is click the “Try it out” link on their chat lists.

Google+ Redesign
Google+ is the Google’s contribution to social networking; and its recently been updated with 41 new features, including design elements, updates to Hangouts, photo editing tools, additional storage, etc. While I’m certain that the Google+ mobile app has been updated, you can best see all of the design changes and feature editions on the desktop. If you haven’t seen Google+ lately, you need to check it out.

The one big disappointment out of the Google I/O keynote was the lack of a new Android OS or Chrome OS announcement. Perhaps Google is taking the time to delay a new version of either OS to address fragmentation and symmetry issues. This would be a GREAT idea in my opinion. The many different flavors of Android available and in use today are issues that Google needs to address.

At some point, Google will want to retire some versions and insure that those that can update do. This is going to be challenging, though, as many mobile carriers have control of what’s updated on what devices on their networks.

Google I/O – The Cool Stuff: Part 1

Related Posts:

• Google Snatches up Waze in a Strategic Acquisition
• Google I/O – The Cool Stuff: Part 1
• Macroscop – interactive medical infographic based on Google searches
• Industry In-Fighting is Really Starting to Tick Me Off
• Connected to the ultimate technology – Through Google Glass

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!

Google I/O – The Cool Stuff: Part 2

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
• Google Snatches up Waze in a Strategic Acquisition
• Google I/O – The Cool Stuff: Part 2

A bird’s-eye view on a nation’s health issues through searches made on Google

The online magazine Das Cloud and the interactive agency X3 are launching Macroscop, the first data journalism project in Romania. The experimental project brought together a team of journalists, designers, and programmers that analyzed medical searches made on Google, from Romania, in the last 3 years, and made a visual interactive representation with the top 14 high volume searches. The terms are ”medical tests”, ”mite”, ”colon help”, ”swine flu”, ”helicobacter pylori”, ”hepatitis C”, ”lupus”, ”meningitis”, ”mite bite”, ”pancreatitis”, ”measles”, ”rubella”, ”scoliosis”, ”shingles”.

What can be said about a nation’s state of health based on the evolution of the most searched-for terms on Google ? In some of the cases, there are large similarities with the reports of the medical institutions. For example, when a rubella epidemic was starting in Romania in November 2011, the number of searches on Google for this term increased with more than 88% month-over-month in October. In the following month, both the National Center for Surveillance and Control of Communicable Diseases of Romania (CSCCD) and Romanian mass media were scoring larger than normal activity on the topic of rubella. CSCCD saw a 33.3% increase in the reported cases of rubella and Romanian media produced 68.63% more articles with the subject of rubella.

See the chart below:

In most of the cases, the media has a large influence on what people are searching on the internet. It can either stimulate a large artificial interest for a disease by only reporting on a few cases (e.g.: a mite byte can give Lyme disease or when a public figure was diagnosed) or act as a resonance box when citing medical reports of a disease. This is why we have overlapped data from Romanian media monitoring tool Media IQ on Macroscop. The Google searches made by the whole population of a country could theoretically match the results made by health institutions, but faster, if one could extract the external elements influencing the searches, such as media articles or online advertising.

“In a digital world, journalists now have huge amounts of information at hand that they can use to obtain a bird’s-eye view on a topic and pursue data storytelling. Even more, if they put the data in the form of an interactive chart, the journalistic endeavor can be continued by the readers. Macroscop is a tool that anyone can use to discover things that we, at Das Cloud, didn’t see,” said Bogdan Pencea, project manager of Das Cloud.

The data from Google searches can be used as a complementary cheap surveillance tool for monitoring the health state of a nation, to detect when and where medical services are needed. In Romania, the number of physicians is the lowest in the European Union, except only Poland, due to brain drain towards more developed countries. 42,000 physicians have to keep healthy a population of 19 million people. The relevancy of the Google medical queries grows as the number of internet users is growing. About 50% of Romanians were using the internet in 2012. One of their popular activities is searching for medical advice on the internet. The largest medical portal had 2.6 million unique visitors last month. So, Romania needs either more physicians, or more users with internet access. In both circumstances, the population could more easily get access to information that can teach them how to prevent illness or when to go see a doctor.

“An educated patient is a better patient and a better partner with the caregiver.  And in areas where the health system is weak, having access to information for people to take more charge of their health  is an important factor to strengthening  healthy communities and limiting the spread of contagious disease,” said Christopher Bailey from World Health Organization, questioned by Das Cloud.

Das Cloud is an online magazine of the community of developers, designers, and entrepreneurs in the field of technology in Romania whose mission is to bring into the public eye the latest releases in the world of high-tech, deciphering their practical impact. Through articles and creative special projects, Das Cloud tries to imagine how technology could change people’s lives for the better.

Related Posts:

• Google Snatches up Waze in a Strategic Acquisition
• Google I/O – The Cool Stuff: Part 2
• Google I/O – The Cool Stuff: Part 1
• Check out the health status and temperature of your HDD/SSD
• Industry In-Fighting is Really Starting to Tick Me Off

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

Watch any futuristic film and you’re usually confronted with the Directors ideas of what future technology might look like.

If you’ve seen a computer display in a pair of glasses you might be forgiven for putting this in the realm of fiction but technology writers and experts are getting excited by Google Glass, an Android-powered head mounted computer display which Google say will be on the market by the end of 2013.Practically Google Glass operates on a similar level to a Smartphone or Tablet. Think of varied apps like maps or restaurant finders, a camera, email and internet surfing all with voice activation. All these feature with Google Glass. The different is the hands-free nature of the devices. The small device can sit on a pair of glasses and Google’s initial promo video’s give the feeling of text and information displayed right infront of your eyes whether snapping a picture or reading as message.

Google are saying the devices will be available to buy at the end of 2013 and prices seem to be around the $1500 mark, although no one is quite sure. There is a secretive and low key approach from Google that has got some people asking some questions. Recently a Google Glass appeared on eBay at a $16000 price. Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin quickly spoke out that people should avoid these fake or counterfeit models. His TED seminar on the subject was again a little low key and he said that although a 2013 launch was likely there was still a lot of work to do on the product.

This doesn’t seem like an Apple-style reveal but rather a trickle down information cycle on this new product – with the hope that customers will not be able to restrain themselves when the Google Glass is finally launched. Some people have been able to get hold of a Google Glass as product testers. Through an application procedure on Google+ members of the public have been able to apply to try out the devices. Using a #ifihadaglass hashtag you can say what you would do with a Google Glass in your hands. The best ones get the chance to try it out – but apply quickly this is only running for a few more days. When thinking about Google Glass the key question would seem to be around it’s likely impact.

Do we really need a computer built into our glasses? Other than looking cool there seem to be some great benefits. Imagine a surgeon relaying his first person perspective of an operation to medical students online. This immediate capturing of life events or the ability to see through someone’s eyes is incredibly attractive. But concerns exist around Google’s ongoing collecting of data about us as we search. Will what we see and where we go be added to this? Are the days of face recognition and of real-time customer information even closer? We’ll have to wait till the end of the year to find out.

Related Posts:

• Google Android Platform will be optimized for Intel Architecture
• Industry In-Fighting is Really Starting to Tick Me Off
• Fast and Fluid Future at Mobile World Congress 2012
• Google’s Biggest Problem – Focus Part 3
• Google’s Biggest Problem – Focus Part 2

When a company wants to increase its profile it’s a common practice for the company to use advertisements; whether online or in print. I think it’s fair to say that generally the content of the advertisement seeks to inform the potential customer of the service that the company can provide for them. However, sometimes the thrust of an advert can be an attempt to discredit a competitor, and that’s exactly the line that Microsoft have gone down with their ‘Scroogled’ campaign.

In a nutshell, on the 7th of February, Microsoft began a campaign that was quite simply an attack on the search engine giant Google. Rather than the content of the campaign predominantly being an informative look at what Microsoft can provide for you, Microsoft were intent on letting the public know that Google uses information gleaned from the contents of customer’s Gmail in order to create advertising relevant to the customers interests. Microsoft report that Google target keywords within emails to get a clearer of idea of the kind of products that the customer may be interested in. The selling point of Microsoft’s campaign is a plea for Gmail customers to leave Google and use Microsoft Outlook instead.

Microsoft’s “Scroogled” Gmail Ad

On Scroogled.com you’ll find all the information that Microsoft has dug up regarding the way that Google uses information in order to tailor advertising. You’ll also find a petition that Microsoft invites you to sign, imploring Google to stop using their customer’s information to sell advertising space. To say that the petition isn’t going well would be a bit of an understatement: as of today Microsoft had just over 5000 signatures out of a desired 25000.
Many are questioning whether or not this was a sensible move from Microsoft. There are many that suggest that Microsoft come out of the Scroogled campaign looking pretty petty and aggressive. The overwhelming opinion seems to be that rather than discrediting Google, Microsoft should be trying to focus on selling their own product. If Outlook is that good, then it will overtake Gmail in a natural and organic way. It seems unlikely that all of Gmail’s customer’s will suddenly stop using their Gmail and switch to Outlook on the basis of a seemingly bile-filled campaign from Microsoft. It reflects poorly on Microsoft, and it makes it clear that they seem far too concerned about their competition rather than providing quality products that users want to use.

Outlook or Gmail?

These two mail clients tend to divide opinion. Only recently has Outlook emerged as a serious contender to Gmail having branched out from Windows Outlook to browser-based email. Generally, the opinion seems to be that Outlook is a far prettier email client to use; users believe that it has a more intuitive design. Outlook also seems to integrate better with most social networks. However, Gmail tends to gain the most favorable reviews in regard to the actual messaging system which is of course the bread and butter of any email client.

Related Posts:

• Microsoft will conquer China through Bing
• Industry In-Fighting is Really Starting to Tick Me Off
• Office 365 – Is Office Online the Right Choice for You?
• Google Drive – A Foggy Cloud Experience
• RIM’s Impending Collapse – Sometimes I Hate it When I’m Right – Part 2

I’m in the middle of a love-hate relationship with Google Drive…

I’ve been living in the cloud for quite some time. I’ve had my Outlook contacts syncing with Plaxo since 2003 or so. I’ve also had accounts on Microsoft SkyDrive, Drop Box, and LiveDrive.  In some way, I’ve found all of these services wanting. But make no mistake, I’m very comfortable with my data in The Cloud. If you think about it, its very much like the dumb terminal-mainframe/mini computer model that everyone started using back in the 1970′s or so.

Most recently, I’ve switched to Google Drive; and there are some specific reasons for that. First and foremost, it works at the office.  The company I work at allows Google services through the firewall, and Google Drive works through Google’s standard Google Account authentication. None of the other client solutions I’ve used work the way they’re supposed to at the office. They’re all blocked.  Secondly, its nice to be able to have important files accessible on any the hard drive of connected machine, where and when I use them.

The biggest plus I have with the service is also the biggest problem I have – the client app. It keeps on crashing at the office.

The office PC runs Windows XP SP3; and while that’s hugely antiquated – its 3 major OS revisions (not releases) behind (Windows 7, Windows 7 SP1, and Windows 8) – it is what the organization trusts and is supporting as a whole throughout the enterprise.  I think Google Drives WinXP support is a bid dodgy. When Google Drive does crap out – and it errors out at LEAST once a day, if not more – I either get an error from Google Drive saying that its encountered an error and needs to close or Explorer itself crashes.

The first error is easy to recover from. All I have to do is restart Google Drive.  The second isn’t.  I have to wait for Windows to recover and then I have to bounce the PC.  If I don’t, I can’t access all of the previously running programs or System Tray extensions. The PC also becomes rather unstable.  This usually comes about because I’ve tried to browse to a deep, nested folder on my hard drive.

One of the things that I’ve learned to do is to quit the Google Drive client app before I browse my PC for files.  There’s no other way to prevent the app from erroring out.  Since the Windows 7 PC I have, doesn’t experience the problem, the only thing I can assume is that is related to the OS.  My Mac also doesn’t have client issues.

I’m not sure if Google plans on doing anything about it, but my gut tells me no. Unfortunately, that leaves me with a very foggy Cloud based experience with my data.  I just hope that the errors I know I’m going to bump into don’t damage my data.

Related Posts:

• Office 365 – Is Office Online the Right Choice for You?
• Don’t get Scroogled by Google, use Outlook – Says Microsoft
• Google Kills off Google Apps Standard
• Google Snatches up Waze in a Strategic Acquisition
• Google I/O – The Cool Stuff: Part 2