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Google Assistant Brutally Slaughtered Siri at I/O 2018

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If you have been a user of personal assistants for a while, you would have noticed that Apple’s Siri has been falling behind, outpacing Microsoft’s Cortana with Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant taking the lead. It was not even a fair fight to begin with but if you were one of the folks who attended Google I/O 2018 in person or remotely you would have caught a demo of some of the features that Google has been working on bringing to Google Assistant. Lets explore a few of these features in more detail.

PGP Support STILL Missing from GMail.com

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Google has gotten a fair amount of phrase over the updated GMail redesign that was made available for users to begin testing yesterday. GMail has adopted a modern re-design that is simply stunning. Aside from the re-design, Google has introduced a few new features such as smart replies, integration with Keep and other Google Applications and self-destructing messages. Sadly one feature that is missing is one that has been requested for years – Native OpenPGP support!

Six Changes I Would Make To Improve the Pixelbook

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Since its launch in late 2017, the Google Pixelbook has been a smash hit with owners (including myself) regardless of the early criticisms of some tech reviewers. I have owned by Pixelbook for several months and it has quickly become my daily driver. It is simply great but if Google were to let me loose in their development lab for a day, these are the changes I would make to the Pixelbook.

Thoughts on Google’s Project Fi

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Rumors of a Google sponsored cell phone service have been around since the launch of the HTC Dream in 2008. These rumors were accelerated with Google purchasing the VoIP provider Grand Central less then a year later (later re-branded to Google Voice). Google Voice had an amazing launch but later became a barren wasteland which failed to receive the attention it deserved, many felt their dreams of a Google phone service slowly die a painful death. Google Voice eventually became integrated with Google Hangouts which helped to jumpstart its use. Finally, on April 22nd of 2015, Google was ready to show off Project Fi, the first Google MVNO. Here are my thoughts

A Review of the Google Nexus Player

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Over the years, I have amassed a large collection of Google Home Entertainment products including several Google TV set-top boxes and a handful of Google Chromecasts. Google made a somewhat expected announcement late last year that they would discontinue the Google TV system and at the same time announced the successor, Android TV. I managed to pick up a Nexus Player about a month ago and spent the past few weeks kicking the tires. Here is my review of both the Nexus Player and Android TV.

Google in the Home Entertainment Market

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It should not come as a shock that I am a huge Android Fanboy who is often an early adopter of the the latest offerings from Mountain View however I will also be the first to admit that Google has often failed miserably in capturing a fair share of the Home Entertainment market. Google’s “Google TV” platform was in many ways ahead of its time but in other ways but in other ways suffered from some serious problems such complicated controls and a lack of OTA upgrades. With the release of the Nexus Player last year, has Google made a comeback?

Google Wallet IS NOT Dead

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Over the past several days, I have read countless articles about how Google Wallet’s purchase of SoftPay will allow them to come back from the dead however this is quite impossible… Why??? Because Google Wallet was NEVER dead to begin with. Many popular websites have been reporting that ApplePay has dealt several deathblows to Google Wallet however this is all blown out of proportion and amasses to nothing but click bait.

A Crash Course in Android Security

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I spend a lot of time online reading technical and security websites and am often baffled on the amount of misinformation I keep seeing. Several of these websites seem to promote several different third party products and services that are not really necessary in most cases. This is a modern version of the old defunct argument for Android Task Killers. Instead of promoting any third party products, lets look at three practical Android Security Tips that will keep you safe.

Thoughts On The End Of The Google Glass Explorer Program

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The Google Glass team made an announcement today that the Google Glass Explorer Program will be coming to an end within the next few days. This news does not come as a surprise to me as the Google has set the expectation from day one that the Glass Explorer program was essentially a public beta. As with all beta programs, they must come to an end. The news is very bittersweet to me as I was one of the first 8,000 Google Glass Explorers to get their hands on Google Glass nearly a year and a half ago.