09 Jul 11 From Buzz to Plus

Sorry, I could not resist playing this pun on Google’s new attempt on social networking. Not that I have ever used Buzz, I have indeed created a Google profile back in those days. Now that Google has started the party again, I have managed to get an invitation and actually join the club (which does not seem too easy, according to some comments). Just started playing with it and I have to admit it really looks interesting. Of course it brings along the standard social features like a profile page and posting your content but there is a fine difference when it comes to connecting to people. While most social networks only have the possibility to “friend” someone on a mutual basis and Twitter only knows the concept of following people, Plus blends these worlds together and allows to connect to people either in a two-way fashion or unidirectional. The Circles feature allows to group your contacts and even the initial collection of circles suggest the separation of contacts that know you from those that you are interested in.

When raising the topic of social networks, most of the time the question of privacy and data protection arises (at least here in Germany). As with its established services, Google makes a quite transparent impression here. You cannot only review the privacy policy of the service, even better, you have the possibility to review the visibility of all your data (there is even a feature to preview your profile from the eyes of another person – just enter the name). All content can be downloaded to ZIP or JSON files which is in my eyes the highest level of transparency that can be established for such a service.

At this point of time, Plus is just a bread-and-butter social network. There are no apps and no API has been released (yet). All looks very neat and tidy and I sincerely hope it stays the same.

My bottomline, this new service looks very promising. I do not think it will replace Twitter or Facebook in the short and medium term but if Google continues this way, it will certainly grab its share of the market.

My profile can be found at: http://profiles.google.com/oliver77charles

14 Feb 11 Dropbox

In the past months, I have been in touch with Microsoft Office Groove several times. This is a productivity software for global workgroup file sharing. While it serves its purpose very well, it has got one major drawback: the software needs to run in Windows which makes it impossible for me to use in daily work (a second disadvantage is that the files are in a virtual file system and even locally not accessible without the Groove software). When thinking about an alternative, I crossed Dropbox, a file sharing service which seems quite similar at first glance. In brief, it works as follows:

• You register at dropbox.com to get an account. This is free (of charge) for the first 2 Gigabytes. If you want more, you need to pay a monthly fee.
• You install the (closed source) software on your PC(s). It is available for several OSes. Upon installation, one folder in your file system is defined as the Dropbox folder. That’s it.
• You copy files to this folder. They are transparently uploaded to the Dropbox storage. As soon as another connected PC goes online, the files are automatically synced there (the mobile variants only sync on demand).
• Optionally, you invite other Dropbox users to selected subfolders. Files can thus be shared cross-account.

I do not want to list all the features and functions here but leave looking up Dropboxʼ website as an exercise to the reader.
All the synced files stay in your local file system (and those of all connected PCs). This means that you can access the files offline and even if the Dropbox daemon is not running. Furthermore, synchronization does not depend on the availability of another PC of your collection. As the files are stored “in the cloud”, file transfers are not peer to peer. While this can be an advantage, it leads to security issues:

• Your files are held in a third-party storage (Dropbox uses Amazonʼs cloud service). While Dropbox claim that your files are stored AES-encrypted so they have no access to them, it is a matter of trust whether you believe this. Also the question is whether the files are already encrypted locally, on your PC or the encryption takes place after the (SSL encrypted) transfer to the cloud server. I think that the latter is the case because sharing folders with other users would be difficult otherwise and there is no reference to a local AES key either. Therefore, I consider that a security gap which the user should bridge by locally encrypting the files before copying them to the Dropbox folder.
• The security mechanism is simply username and password. No two-factor authentication available.

23 Jan 11 After a couple of days

Nearly a week has gone by since I have bought my Defy. All in all it has made a good impression. I must say that the philosophical difference between iOS and Android got visible very quickly. The user has got a lot of freedom with the latter but this is bought with the increased chance to break something and sometimes difficulty to make something work.
Two examples: I am running my own mail server with an SSL/TLS certificate which is not signed by a well-known root CA. Bad luck with installing either the cert or the CA to Android so it will not spit certificate warnings all the time. I have found some solutions to this but these include either “rooting” the phone or messing with the Android SDK and neither is what I want just to accept my certificate.
The other issue is my WiFi. I have associated the device with a couple of access points successfully, among them LinkSys and SnapGear but I have failed to do so with my own Belkin one. My research so far has led to incompatibilities with the 802.11n standard but the Belkin does not even allow to deactivate it. Sigh.
Hence, a lot remains to do. To me, it seems that Android is an OS for tech-savvy people, rather not for the average user but maybe my use case is a special one. We’ll see.

19 Jan 11 [A] robot or synthetic organism designed to look and act like a human

This is Wikipedia’s definition of an android. Well, a few years ago, Google’s search results for this term would have more or less looked like this. Times have changed. Today, most (tech-savvy) people associate this term primarily with the operating system. Finally, I have made the step from the Dark Side™ (iPhone) to the not-so-dark side. Not that I have been particularly dissatisfied with the iPhone, I really like it and it has served me well for the past two years, I just felt it was time for something new. What were the options? IPhone 4 would have been a save haven for sure. Blackberry? No way. Fine for business (I use one there) but not for trying the hardware to the edge. Symbian? Could be nice but I have not really considered it. Windows Phone? Well, I think that Microsoft and Windows have made huge steps in the past years, chasing the market where they have fallen behind. However, I do not think this OS really fits mobile devices. So for me it was Android. It has been in the market for a decent time now, the number of apps is overwhelming and I really like the quite-open concept (no need for a PC software to sync, direct access to the SD card, alternative markets, the ability to plug in alternative apps for core functions etc.)

The question was which phone to by. I fancied the Nexus S which is planned to be shipped to Germany in spring but my final choice was a not so high-end (and not so expensive) alternative, the Motorola Defy. It is a decent smartphone with all of the normal features but it has one asset rarely found in the market: Its case is IP67 protected which stands for dust tight and waterproof up (or rather down) to a depth of 1m for at least 30 minutes. I have had plain phones with similar features in the past (e.g. the Siemens ME45) but this is my first such smartphone.

The initial setup was straightforward: unpack it, charge it, insert SIM, power on and off you go. The phone came with a couple of apps preinstalled and the good integration of online services (like Google) made it very easy to fill the calendar, the contacts and such. Well, this is a solid basis but in the end, a smartphone is nothing without a handcrafted selection of fine apps, tailored to the needs of its owner. So I launched the Marketplace, selected my first apps and clicked “install”. As slick as the first part of the setup went, as disappointed I was at this moment. The status said “Starting download” and the progress bar stayed at…0%. I do not want to elaborate the entire story of troubleshooting but in brief, among it were the following steps: Troubleshot Wifi and 3G connections, activated Google Checkout account, started and restarted Google Talk, upgraded Marketplace and retried the apps’ installation. I even performed a factory reset (which was safe as all the data was synced with online services), all to no avail. The crucial hint came from a discussion in a Marketplace support forum: Finally, I logged into the Youtube App with my Google account and voilà, the downloads started automagically. No idea why (and why not in the first place), maybe I’ll find out in the future. I have to say that only my childlike curiosity made me to try for so long, this is certainly nothing Motorola/Google/Telekom can expect from their customers.

Apart from this incident, I have a really good impression so far. The phone runs fast and stable (wonder for how long) and it really has many, many options to modify. This makes it sometimes tricky to keep track but I asked for it. On the other hand, this gives me some flexibility the iPhone lacked (like disabling the vibrator for the alarm clock but keeping it on for phone calls). Let’s see what the first weeks with the new one will show.

18 Jan 11 Dust…anybody? No? Dust…

02 Jun 10 A big one

Having arrived at Munich airport for my flight back home, I was wondering why the viewing platforms were so crowded, even on a rainy day. The answer can be seen in the picture. The first Lufthansa A380 visited MUC on a pilot training/promotion tour. It will enter regular service soon, kicking off with a flight from Frankfurt to Johannesburg, transporting the German national football team to the World Cup.