As most of you know, I am a die hard Android Fanboy and use Ubuntu GNOME as my primary desktop operating system. I am often accused of being a bit overly critical of Apple products and people claim that I have never given them a fair chance. While I have my reasons for my distaste for Apple products, many tend to discredit me as I have not spent more then a few hours with one of their products. That changes TODAY
For anyone that knows me, one thing is made abruptly clear almost immediately. I do not like Apple Products, I will never buy one and I will never own one. In fact, I have been known to publicly ridicule anyone who owns an Apple Product. This post may come as a shock but I will actually be giving Apple a compliment today, yes you read that correctly and no, I have not been kidnapped by the Coupertino mafia.
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.
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?
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.
We owe a lot to the widely used, yet under-appreciated encryption system known as the GNU Privacy Guard, also known as GnuPG. Although GnuPG has been around for a very long time, it recently made it into the news as one of the tools used by Edward Snowden to encrypt emails containing sensitive information. What is hard to believe is that the GnuPG software stack was built and maintained by one single person, Werner Koch who makes his living giving the software away for free. Werner has unfortunately come under some hard times as donations have dried up and he is looking for help.
I tend to get very attached to my Android devices although I do not like to part ways with my devices, I would rather have them being appreciated by others rather then collecting dust on my bookshelf. I have sold my fair share of Android Devices over the past few months and have put together a comprehensive guide to selling your old phones and tablets.
In my personal life, I make it clear that I am a huge fan of Open Source Technology and often use Ubuntu GNOME as my daily driver. Over the past few years, I have taken a front row seat in watching Microsoft fall from it’s once mighty pedestal with the flop that was Windows 8. Granted Windows 8.1 did fix a lot of the issues reported by Windows user, it still feels like an operating system with an identity crisis. This comes at a time where Android and ChomeOS have both overtook the Tablet, Low Power and Educational Markets and could have been a serious death blow to the once mighty king.
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.
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.