Blue Bugle: Mobile, Desktop & Web Technologies

Remember we reported the shutdown of Google Reader a few days back? It used to be one of the Google services that reached a few million people instead of a few hundred millions as Google wants its products to. Hence, the search giant decided to shut down the reader application, putting millions out in the street. We were gladly rescued by a overwhelmingly simple feed reader application known as Feedly . Feedly Feedly came and conquered. It does have an interface with which you can import all your feed content directly from Google Reader itself. Since it was one of the early adopters of Google Reader refugees, it had a major boost in its traffic and user stats. With is iOS and Android apps, Feedly beckoned the readers who were desperately looking for a platform to place their feeds. And it worked. The application had a boost in traffic so tremendous that it had to make internal changes. Now the Feedly cloud application goes through regular maintenance and feature updates...

You have probably already read our reviews of HTC One  and Galaxy S4 . These are the best and brightest of the currently available Android smartphones on the market. These smartphones have the best display, processors, graphics options, memory, storage, and of course high price. They come with Android 4.1.2 and 4.2.2 respectively, with HTC’s and Samsung’s special skin on top of Android. Google releases its Android OS and licenses it out to all these smartphone manufacturers, who decide to change the OS in the way they want and skin it up with their own designs. Although these designs are quite amazing, people are still pretty interested in Google’s own non-customized Android as found in the Nexus line. The latest Nexus device is LG’s Nexus 4  that has its own disadvantages, such as lack of LTE for one. Now, however, you are getting an option to get a Nexus-like operating system on one of these premier devices, HTC One and Galaxy S4. Here are the Google Play editions of the...

Google protects your web browsing with its Safe Browsing technology without even your knowledge. If you are using Google as a search engine , you are automatically protected by Safe Browsing. This is the engine that warns you about a website and gives you notification as to whether or not the content is safe for browsing. All Google products, including the browser, Chrome, are already provided with Safe Browsing technology. It is also available in other major browsers including Firefox and Apple Safari. Recently, Google published this transparency report  that raises some genuine concerns over the way we browse the Internet. It seems the websites that have been hacked pose more threat to us than those which have been intentionally built to hack. In our previous interactions regarding Java  and other software products, we have mentioned quite a bit about web security. It is pretty important that you do two things—update software that you have on your system and keep a very ...

A few days ago, you may have read our post regarding the new product from Google, Glass . It has come and we got to see it in action. The real question here is, whether anyone should really be excited about this augmented reality goggles from Google. Let’s find out. Google Glass has been the focus of attention in the technology world for the last couple of months. One of the first things that anyone would ask about Glass is whether it is stylish enough to be worn outside or would it make you look dorky? This is difficult to find out as the product has not reached our hands yet. Only a few people have had the opportunity to wear Glass and get out. EIC of Engadget, Tim Stevens was one of the first to experience Google Glass, and he has written in detail about it . His review points out “A heads-up display seems like a natural fit”. In comparison to your smartphones, Google Glass does seem easier to use. It does look stylish upon your regular eyeglasses. You may have noticed the sp...

It was March 30, 2011 . Google announced its plans to build an infrastructure that will provide ultra-high-speed broadband to a few lucky users in Kansas City, Kansas. This is Google Fiber, the ultra-fast Internet service from the search giant. With this development, one has to wonder if we are there yet? In terms of the fastest speeds in broadband, the United States, despite being a giant in technology, is ranked nowhere. South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, etc., have broad band connections with an average speed around 50 Mbps. As reported by the NY Times in a recent article, South Korea already had plans to build nearly 1 Gbps speed into every home in the country; already, about 1500 homes in 5 cities have been connected to 1 Gbps Internet. We don’t know how far the program has progressed since then. In the recent analysis, South Korea already has the fastest Internet speeds in the world, with Hong Kong competing close behind. That country’s Internet is easily 200 times f...

ECPA (the Electronic Communications Privacy Act) of 1986 in the United States has enabled the US government to legally seek information from online service providers about various activities conducted by their users. It had a major amendment in the form of the Patriot Act of Oct 26, 2011 , in response to the 9/11 attacks. With this amendment, the government and agencies affiliated to the government, such as the FBI, NSA, etc., can demand information about user activities from any company. Google, in its transparency report  about user data requests, did reveal the information demanded by government agencies. Quite recently, Microsoft also outed how much data has been requested from the company by the use of this law. Through the amendment known as the Patriot act (USA PATRIOT Act), law enforcement agencies are capable of demanding information required for further investigation and evidence-gathering through what is known as National Security Letters (NSL). ECPA, Patriot Act, ...

For a very, very long time, since when I started my technical exploits, I was relying on Google Reader for getting updates. From some of our major, vintage news sources—from BBC, CNN, the Atlantic, to Wired, CNET, and a million others. It is indeed a pretty sad thing that Google announced yesterday a spring of cleaning, and out of various things that will go away is Google Reader. One thing that you urgently need to do before the Reader disappears on July 1 is to take the data out. Take it to a different feed reader and read it there. Alternatively, use your browser’s bookmarking tool to set your favorite publications as bookmarks. The reason why I am writing this article is to let you know how you can download the Reader data from Google, for the people who have never heard about Google Takeout . It’s pretty simple and straightforward. First of all, from the Takeout website, select the service (in this case Google Reader) and then click on Create Archive to get the archive...

Have you been hearing quite a bit about the upcoming custom TLDs lately? A few domain names that may appear in the near future are .google, .apple, .microsoft, .app, .book, .android, .search, and the list goes on. These are custom top level domains, slightly different from the existing generic top level domains you know, such as .com, .org, .net, .info, .mil, .edu, .biz, .gov, etc. Each of these generic TLDs has its own use; for instance, .mil is allocated for military websites only, while .gov is for government websites. When it comes to custom TLDs, anybody can apply and get a TLD that they would like. It could be your name, your company name, or any word you choose. ICANN (Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers) manages TLDs and custom TLDs across the world. The corporation announced that it would take applications for these custom TLDs on June 20, 2011 in Singapore, and the application process started between Jan 12 and April 12, 2012 . Around that time, ICANN al...

You have probably read about Ubuntu for smartphones in our earlier article about it. This is a groundbreaking new operating system that comes to smartphones from Canonical (the maker of Ubuntu). Ubuntu is one of the most popular of Linux distributions out there, among desktop computers. Now the platform is coming to smartphone world with the release of Ubuntu smartphones. Yesterday, as expected, the developer preview of the OS was made available, with the source code and details of installing it on your phone. The version currently available is known as Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview. And this is important—Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview is only for developers and Ubuntu enthusiasts who want to try it out in real. It is not for an average smartphone user who doesn’t have good working knowledge of mobile operating systems. Supported Phones & Tablets Currently, Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview is supported only on Google’s Nexus line of devices, specifically Galaxy Nexus (Samsung...

Here we are back with the whether-or-not-to-buy series. Today’s topic is Google’s new Chromebook Pixel. This is the first ever touch-enabled Chromebook. We have already looked at Samsung’s Google Chromebooks . Google’s Chromebook Pixel is the latest addition to the Chromebook line. We will check out the details of it here. Tech Specs Google Chromebook Pixel has some awesome technical features. We have a comparison here with another Chromebook, Samsung Chromebook 550. Feature Google Chromebook Pixel Samsung Chromebook 550 Notes Display 12.85 inch 2560x1700 px at 239 ppi (multi-touch) protected with Gorilla Glass 12.1 inch (1280x800) Chromebook has better than Retina display  (Apple MacBook Pro with Retina is 227 ppi) Processor Intel Core i5 3427U dual-core 1.8 GHz Dual-core Intel Celeron 1.3 GHz Graphics Intel HD 4000 Intel HD 4000 RAM 4 GB DDR3 4 GB DDR3 ...

On Twitter, the #IfIHadGlass hashtag is going strong with about a tweet every two seconds. If you don’t know about it, it is the hashtag used to inform Google about your desire to get your hands on Google Glass, wearable computing solution from Google. In this article, let’s take a deep look at Google Glass and know how the experience will be. To start with, here, take a look at some of the tweets… Tweets about "#ifihadglass" Please enable JavaScript A Brief History of Wearables It all started with an abacus ring pioneered by the Chinese Quing dynasty in the 1600’s. In the 80’s and 90’s we got to see quite a number of wearable innovations. A few of them are here. In the early 80’s, Dr. Steve Mann, one of the pioneers of wearable computing, invented this largely unappealing apparatus. Rig could be worn, but as you can imagine it is quite easy to go around without it. But again, it was in the 80’s. In the 90’s Steve Mann came up with other inventions, which were a bi...