On 11.27.09, In iPhone/Android, by Matt Brian
With the release of the Motorola Droid, awareness has been raised about the Google Android platform and shown there is a real alternative to Apple’s iPhone. Many people have ditched their iPhone’s and migrated across to the Google platform but have had real trouble working out how to get all of their contacts, settings and app data ported from one device to the other.
We have recently showcased a number of Android apps that will help iPhone owners move from the App Store to the Android Market and today we will show you how to make sure all of your iPhone contacts are ported from the iPhone to your Android phone courtesy of Google Contacts. This is tried and tested on a HTC Hero, I haven’t had the chance to check and see if it works with the Droid. If it works for you, please let us know in the comments.
On 11.24.09, In Tips/Tricks, by pads
Google Wave is one of the latest applications Google is touting at the moment and it’s got some hype – people are clambering high and low to get invites. But is it the ultimate online collaboration tool? Google Wave incorporates external bots and plugins to aid collaboration, although it isn’t clear just how many people use them.
Many of these bots and gadgets are limited in their use at the moment, mainly because most Wave users aren’t completely clear on how Google Wave will work best for them. In the coming months, we expect there to be some real standout applications that help push the Wave service to new heights.
Only time will tell (collaboration is only as powerful as the people using it) but in the meantime we’ll show you 5 things you can do with Google Wave right now by using bots and gadgets.
Please Note: We are also giving away some Google Wave invites, click here for more information.
On 11.24.09, In News, by Matt Brian
Yeah, the title pretty much sums it all up. I was lucky enough to grab a Google Wave invite very soon after the public beta invites were released and have had a long period to test the service, interact with friends and on public waves, now we want to be able to give you the chance to get involved with what’s popular right now.
You can use this article to familiarise yourself with what Google Wave is, what it does and find out just why you will need one.
Update – 25/11/09: We now only have 7 invites left, get in before they run out!
26/11/09 – We have given away all 30 invites but now have 10 more!
On 11.19.09, In iPhone/Android, by Matt Brian
You could have called me an iPhone fanboy, there are plenty of articles on WillINeedIt demonstrating the fact. I recently had the chance to take possession of a new HTC Hero, a Google Android powered phone, and I wanted to see just how well it stacked up against the mercurial Apple device.
I am a week in to my experience of being an Android phone owner and I think it’s safe to say I will be sticking with the open framework and ditching the restrictions and closed nature of the iPhone. I have found that the two devices are very similar and that most of the apps can be downloaded for both platforms.
There are quite a few Android Market list articles floating about on the web and I am going to add another one to the list. This article is for people who have recently moved from an iPhone and want to know just what apps will mimic the functionality of their old device, helping their transition from the walled garden of the iPhone to the glorious pastures of the Android operating system. All of the apps listed here will be downloadable from the Android Market, we will try to either link to the Market or the official homepage of the app itself.
Most modern internet browsers now support the newest HTML 5 coding, but sadly, Internet Explorer is the only web browser out there (with the exception of any mobile browsers) that does not natively support it yet. For those of you who aren’t familiar with web design, HTML is the Hyper-Text Markup Language. This, as well as various other components, give a website its design. A simple analogy of this would be a control room. The people inside the control room would be the HTML programming, given a set of commands to follow, such as redirect flight A to runway B. The flight A would be a plug-in, and runway B would be another form of file, usually Javascript or Cascading Style Sheets, but anyways, the control tower would tell the plugin to run on a certain instruction set (javascript or CSS).
The new HTML 5 is a vast improvement over HTML 4. For example, instead of having to install a separate program to run flash (Adobe Flash plug-in, which is sadly not compatible with Safari Mobile), HTML 5 would be able to run video and sound files without the need for additional plug-ins. Some other new functions include 2-D drawing inside the HTML code, timed media playback (playing a file, say fifteen seconds after you load the website), offline storage (similar to cookies, but more advanced), document editing (Google Docs or Office Live), drag-and-drop (good for file hosting where you have to specify the path of the file), and much more. You may wonder how much of this may affect an average user, but these changes are quite significant. Flash files are larger than most components in a website. These files create beautiful special effects, but they may take some time to load on old, or slow computers. The new HTML 5 will integrate that into itself, so that it can play videos and sounds without having to load much extras. Document editing is currently restricted to its respective online service, like Office Live or Google Docs. These both require you to import files in order to edit and distribute, but the improvements in the HTML 5 allow it to be edited locally and saved locally, without having to upload and download the file.
Google Chrome, one of the newest players in the browser market, has seen a progressive rise in it’s usage throughout the year, really since it’s release. Many coders who had previously embraced open platforms and created extensions for browsers like Mozilla Firefox have started to flex their programming skills for a different browser with the addition of a extension platform within Google Chrome.
That said, some of the better extensions available for the Firefox browser have yet to be ported over to it’s newest competitor. Chrome users are crying out for extensions such as the Web Developer Addon, Adblock (although there is a prototype available in the form of Adsweep) and also the Stumbleupon Toolbar. The Stumbleupon Toolbar is a massive tool for online marketers and social news submitters, some will simply not use Chrome until a toolbar is developed for it.
We recognise that there isn’t a toolbar just yet but it is still very easy to get your Stumbleupon fix. You can still browse, submit and share Stumbles without the addon and we will show you how.
One of the biggest complaints about the App Store is that is really difficult to find new and innovative apps for your iPhone or iPod Touch. Whilst Apple have a Featured and What’s Hot section within their App Store, the organic searching of apps is predominantly down to the name of the app, not the features it possesses.
Luckily there are quite a few websites on hand to help clear the confusion around App Store searching, the newest of them being a service called uQuery, with their self proclaimed tagline: The AppStore Search Engine.
In today’s mobile connected world, a lot of people have moved from their traditional diaries with pen and paper and have moved to a more cloud hosted environment to keep on top of their appointments and engagements. One of the leading calendar providers is of course Google, with their Google Calendar product.
In a recent move, Google have enabled it’s users to add personal information to their calendars, aswell as being able to add sports fixtures/important dates. It’s pretty simple to add these to your calendar, ultimately allowing you to access these dates not only from your browser but also your mobile connected device.
Just three days ago, we published an article on how Google had introduced social features to their online services. At the bottom of the article I mentioned how it was possible Google would push live new features without many people knowing it was coming, today they did exactly that.
Google Reader now has the option to share feed content via a number of different social networks. We will show you how to access this and have your feed reader setup to spam any number of different services.
On 08.10.09, In Cool Websites, by Matt Brian
A little while back, Google introduced Google Profiles, a simple way of allowing people to control the information that would identify them on the popular search engine. Here, profiles would show other users of popular Google services all of your web content in one central location. So far Google have worked the profiles into their search results, in Google Knol, Google Reader and even Google Maps.
Until recently, many of these Google services didn’t have much of a social aspect to them. Google Reader had incorporated a few sharing features into their system but it didn’t exactly allow a seamless flow of information between friends and other Google users.
That has now changed, with many different services incorporating sharing of content and information, this article showing you just a few features.
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