Google Reader’s demise led to Feedly gaining heavily among its alternatives. The once unknown name in RSS feed readers suddenly in period of three months became the most popular feed reader out there. Today Feedly, announced that they are launching Pro accounts for a free of $5 per month. A yearly subscription is $45.
So what does the pro account entail? Not a great deal at the moment. It will have added layer of security by using “https”, ability to search for articles withing your feeds, single click integration to save an article on Evernote account and finally tech support.
Personally I will stick to the free version as the features are not as many and not as critically important to shell out $5 every month. The free version of Feedly will continue but it looks like what Feedly wants to do is put up all add-ons into the a pro-account.
Are “Free” RSS Feed Readers on their way out?
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I think so. RSS feeds are popular but definitely not as popular social media for consuming new content. This is mainly thanks RSS feed consumption not having the ability to discuss and debate. For instance a link I come across on someones Facebook page, I can leave a comment on it and have a discussion on it. We cannot do that with RSS feed readers.
Also the number of people adopting feed readers do not seem to be growing, atleast not by much. This means keeping the products free will be that much harder. I suspect most feed readers like Feedly will end up keeping a no frills RSS reader with new features and integration with other services provided only to people who pay.
What are you views on Feedly’s plans to have a pro account? Do drop in your comments.
Google bought Motorola over a year and half ago. Today, Motorola has unveiled the new Moto X phone. The phone as Motorola’s premier phone will probably compete with Samsung Galaxy S IV, HTC One and Apple iPhone 5. Moto X as a phone is not exactly great on hardware specs and that is not it’s focus. It main focus is on customization options and also some very unique features.
Moto X Basic Specs
Display: 4.7 inch 720p AMOLED display.
Processor: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon s4P processor. 1.7 GHz Dual-Core CPU and Quad-Core GPU.
Battery Time: Full 24 hours battery time.
Memory: 2GB RAM
Storage: Two versions being 16GB and 32 GB
Camera: Front Camera 2 MP and 10 MP camera.
Connectivity: Phone supports Bluetooh 4.0, USB 2.0, WIFI, NFC.
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Always on Microphone
While the hardware is not exactly the best of the best, it will probably help not eat too much of the battery. This is because the microphone of the phone will be always on. It will be able to recognize the voice of the user and not allow others to command the phone.
So the phone would be listening to you all the time. To activate the phone one simply has to say “Okay Google Now”. I use Google Now on my Nexus 4 and its voice activations to reply to an email, set alarms or even search on Google is extremely useful. It it requires me to first activate the microphone. With Moto X, the phone’s interface truly becomes hands free.
The phone will also show displays that allow users to skim through notifications but extending them while the phone is idle. That basically means people can look who the notification is from before opening it.
Motorola’s Allows over 2000 Customization options
Moto X will be sold at $199 with AT&T. This is a sort of subsidized price with a phone contract so the phone without any contracts (like the ones sold in India) will be much costlier. AT&T customers will be able to customize the way their phone looks. Basically on Motorola’s Motomaker website, it allows users to choose from over 18 different colours for the back, different colours for side-mounted buttons and rings around the camera also has mutliple choices.
You can see the customization options in a demo video
Where is Android 4.3?
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Google has bought Motorola, so we could say Moto X is a Google phone. But apparently Google is not so keen on appearing to favour Motorola as a OEM. This means the phone will ship with Android 4.2.2. Though there is not as much bloatware on the phone so Motorola should be able to ship Android 4.3 very soon.
Though some might find it odd that Google cannot ship its own phone with latest Android OS, but that honour seems to be reserved for the Nexus phones.
The phone currently will be sold only in the US and should make it out to other markets. The customization options will in all probability be a US-only feature (rather AT&T only).
Microsoft sure makes some great bloopers while choosing a new brand name. After aggressively pushing the “Sky Drive” brand name for its cloud storage service after it closed down Live Mesh, it was taken to court by BSkyB (British Sky Broadcasting).
The court case was about trademark infringement mainly over the usage of the word “Sky” in a brand name. Microsoft embarrassingly has lost the case and will now need to rename “SkyDrive” to something else. It basically means all efforts of Microsoft to promote SkyDrive as a brand have come down to zero.
Microsoft has chosen to not keep fighting the case and has settled with BSkyB and agreed to rename the service. The confidential agreement apparently also agree on a financial settlement.
BSkyB has given some time to Microsoft to go ahead and re-brand their cloud storage service.
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Microsoft’s similar disaster with “Metro”
This is not exactly the first time Microsoft has named a service and ended up having to rename their service because of legal troubles. It branded its design style on Windows 8 as “Metro Style”. The last August, it decided to drop the the name “Metro” from any branding. Hence “Metro UI” finally ended up being called “Windows 8 style UI”.
What new name do you think Microsoft should call “SkyDrive”? Do drop in your comments.
Samsung has kept rolling out umpteen number of devices and is one of the big successes of the Android platform. Samsung has chased Apple’s iPhone success with a fierce focus.
They not only dominate the smart-phone niche with their Galaxy S III and Galaxy SIV, they have also created a new niche between a phone and a tabet called “Phablet” and have owned this niche with Galaxy Note devices.
But how much is Samsung’s impact on the Android platform. According to OpenSignal, Samsung dominates with a 47.5% share of the Android market.
Each block shows a different device and the size represents how much market share it has on the Android platform. The dominance of Samsung is clearly seen with almost half the Android devices carrying the Samsung name.
Why Samsung’s dominance is not the best news for Google
Google might not be comfortable with a single manufacturer being so dominant on its Android platform. It basically means with Samsung ever moves away from Android, it could cause immeasurable harm the the platform.
Also Samsung is not exactly happy with Google buying Motorola which is bound to compete with Samsung’s Galaxy S IV with Moto X a new phone it released in a couple of days.
What are your thoughts on Samsung’s share of the Android market? Do drop in your comments.
Over a year ago, there was a survey done that showed that 48 of the top 100 blogs in the world were running on WordPress. That showed how the big blogs preferred WordPress as a platform it did not explain how much of the web used the platform. A couple of days ago, Matt Mullenweg (Founder of Automattic) gave a speech at WordCamp San Francisco 2013. He shared an interesting bit of statistic, which was that now 18.9% of web was running on WordPress.
Some WordPress Stats over the past 10 years.
Here are some of the interesting stats about the last year.
Over 46 million downloads of WordPress happened.
336 themes were added to the library in a single year.
There were 6,758 plugins were approved which takes the total over 26,000 plugins in all available on WordPress.
And finally, about 18.9% of the web runs on WordPress.
Future WordPress Updates
There was also an outline of future updates planned for WordPress. This included WordPress 3.7 version that is scheduled for early October. WordPress 3.7 will apparently be a version where major cleanup of the platform will be done. WordPress 3.8 is scheduled to be released in December this year. You can keep a track of WordPress version road-map here.
Gmail has recently changed the way our Inbox is organized by adding tabbed categories. One of them is “Promotions”, where apparently all the advertisement like emails show up. But Gmail is not just eyeing that “Promotions” tab to organize email for us, they want to sell us stuff. This is why you might start seeing sponsored or Gmail ads in the form of emails like seen in the image below.
This is Google’s attempt at making their advertising more accurate and contextual on Gmail. I think this is not going to be very popular in the beginning but it might be popular if Google does not spam too much. I honestly think if Google is going to send one advertisement email every day, no one might really bother checking it.
But Google does offer a way for users to tweaking their ad settings and opt-out of ad targetting based on your data.
There are two options to opt-out of the interest-based ads on Google and also across the web. Note, this does not mean.
Email Ads are here to stay!
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Even though Gmail might allow users to opt-out of interest based ads, it will not stop sending ads in our Inbox. It only means it will not use our data to target us specifically. I rather allow targeted ads than random ads.
The fact seems, if we want a free service, ads are something we will have to live with.
Are you seeing ads in your Gmail Inbox? Do drop in your comments what you think of them?
Google’s “Chrome + Android” event that saw the announcements of Nexus 7, Chromecast and Android 4.3. The Nexus 7 tablet is manufactured by Asus, just like last year. The Nexus 7 priced at US $229, will be available from 30th of July and is the first device to ship with Android 4.3 pre-installed.
Google’s new version of Nexus 7
The Nexus 7 has some good power packed inside it with CPU specs being Snapdragon S4 Pro, 1.5 GHz. It has a faster GPU and 2 GB RAM. This added with being one of the first tablets to support OpenGL ES 3.0 standards.
The tablet packs a 5 MP rear camera and 1.2MP front facing camera. The big difference for Nexus 7 is display. It now sports a 7.02 inch screen, 1920 X 1200 HD display (323 ppi). This means the tablet should have the best screen display for a 7 inch tablet variant, unless Apple ships an iPad Mini with retina display (which is unlikely to happen anytime soon). Nexus 7 supports WIFI, NFC and Bluetooth. It will be selling a optional 4G LTE version in the US.
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Google is focusing on “games” and “video” consumption
As a iPad Mini user, I can attest that anyone who I see using the tablet for the first time, in a few minutes ends up trying out a game. This is why the iPad is not just a tablet for one person (unlike a phone) but also is used by kids especially in a family environment. Google understands that and hence has focused on making Nexus 7 more interesting to gamers.
Android 4.3 – has new feature called “Restricted Profiles” for parental control
The tablet’s big focus on better processor hardware was a given but its focus on better display shows it is getting serious about gaming. It has also introduced “Restricted Profiles” with Android 4.3 for allowing parental control. It also stream hi-def video from Netflix which will drive video consumption.
In other words, what Android ecosystem might lack in exclusive tablet apps it is trying to catch up with better display and performance for gaming and video consumption. It is not entirely a misplaced idea as most people do consume a great deal of video and gaming content on tablet than say a phone where a dynamic app ecosystem really kicks in.
Google might also be trying to help matters with helpful new tools in the Android Studio new version announced at Google IO 2013, but it is still a long way from match the quality of apps available on iPad.
It will be interesting to see what Apple comes out with later in the year and early next year in response to this Nexus 7 tablet. Do drop in your comments.
In March this year, Flipboard introduced Magazines which allowed users to curate content and share them with others. These digital magazines can be curated by one person who can even invite other curators on Flipboard. Flipboard took a very unique look at growth and decided to work solely on mobile platforms as an app and was not available on the web browser. Today it has announced the web browser version for sharing magazines.
The Flipboard magazines on the browser keep the same layout it would show on a tablet. This basically means if you share a magazine you curate on Flipboard on social media, it can be viewed by everyone and not just the people who have the app.
Flipboard Magazines can now be viewed on your desktop browser
Flipboard’s new focus is ‘content sharing’
Flipboard was focused on how users consume their RSS feeds or even feeds from their social media account. With Flipboard Magazines, they basically have manually curated magazines. That was the first indication that the focus was shifting from just consuming content to actually ‘sharing content’.
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So it was only logical that not everyone is expected to download an app just to follow a curated magazines and hence Flipboard new web friendly avatar. Personally I do think it is a good idea because if Google Reader had focused on getting people to share the content they consume, it might have had a very different story.
Google owned Motorola has finally announced an event where the new phone “Moto X” is expected to be announced. Motorola has been struggling to become profitable over the past few years when Google acquired it. It was expected that someday Motorola will churn out a Google phone now that it is part of Google. The event will be held in New York.
Google does announce Nexus phones which gives the pure Android experience every year but with Nexus phones they are basically working with a company with their own limitations and agendas. With Motorola, Google has complete control of the device so expectations from this phone will be high.
What to expect from “Moto X”?
Just about everything related to Moto X has been secret. Google has done a very good job on keeping things secret (which makes me wonder if phone leaks are done on purpose).
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The phone is expected to have some features like listening to voice command at all times even when the phone is idle or showing icon based notifications when the phone is idle. These features were leaked by Canada based mobile operator Roger Wireless (Check out the leaked video).
Sundar Pichai the man who heads Android and Chrome at Google, is also hosting an event on the 24th July. So we should be expecting a new version of Android very soon. This new version of Android will most probably be shipped with “Moto X”.
Motorola’s success is important to Google
Google recently has been investing a lot of money into Motorola and also writing off losses. That is sustainable in the short run but for an increasing mobile and tablet world, advertising revenues might soon stagnate for Google. Google needs Motorola to basically pay for itself if not earn it handsome profits. Will it work out? Only time will tell.
Google Maps had last year, much to the delight of iPhone users, released an official app for the phone. Apple had chucked Google Maps for their own Maps service which was less than satisfactory and ended up getting criticized. The criticism even had Apple’s CEO Tim Cook apologize for it. That is old news. Google has moved ahead with a new user-interface for its Maps on Android and has now rolled out the same of iOS users. The big news here is finally it has also released an official iPad version.
I checked out the app on my iPad and came away impressed. The android version on my phone is great for navigation and reviewing places but the iPad version pretty much matches feature to feature. The bigger screen also is much better for navigation purposes.
The search option to find locations and routes displayed are clean and without any information overload. While on the phone version it requires moving down to check alternate routes, because of the bigger screen on iPad, the several options can be viewed at the same time.
Several alternate routes displayed on Google Maps for iPad
The turn-by turn navigation UI is also a lot better with options to view toggle to satellite view. About a year ago, I was not very happy with the navigation mode for Google Maps and found it was not as accurate in India. But it has become extremely accurate over the past few months, especially in cities.
Navigation UI for Google Maps on iPad
Finally one of my favorite features on Google Maps in the new UI, is the ease with which users can review places they visit. Simply click on any of the places you find on Google Maps and it allows users to review the place. I think this is Google’s way of leveraging its Google+ layer on Google Maps.
Review places on Google Maps by simply tapping on it
I think it was about time for Google to release its Maps app officially for iPad. The browser version would work fine but it was tedious. Overall, I think in the maps business, with the acquisition of Waze, Google has more or less taken a unbeatable lead atleast for the foreseeable future.
Try out the new Google Maps app for iPad and drop in your comments.
