Galaxy S4, Nexus Edition

Google didn't announce a new Nexus device at Google I/O, but you'll still get something close to a Nexus phone: Samsung Galaxy S4, unlocked, with LTE support for T-Mobile and AT&T, Google software and quick updates. It will be available on June 26 from Google Play US for $649.



"This is a Samsung Galaxy S4 with the same software experience we ship on our Nexus devices. It's Google's take on Android and it feels awesome on the S4," said Google VP Hugo Barra.

It's good news for everyone. Google can sell a powerful LTE phone that doesn't compete with Nexus 4 because it's more expensive. Samsung has access to Google's software updates, so there's less work to keep up with the new Android versions. Developers can buy a Nexus version of the most popular Android phone and can even use a MicroSD card. People who want to buy a Galaxy S4, but don't like Samsung's TouchWiz software, no longer have to rely on custom ROMs. Projects like CyanogenMod will do a better job of supporting Galaxy S4. Even if you buy the regular Galaxy S4, you'll get better software, whether you stick with Samsung's software or you install a custom ROM.



Samsung manufactured 2 other Nexus phones (Nexus S - 2010, Galaxy Nexus - 2011) and a Nexus tablet (Nexus 10 - 2012).

Preview the New Google Maps

Until Google sends invites that let you preview the new Google Maps interface, check the MoreThanAMap site to see the new maps. It's a site that shows demos for various Google Maps API features, but the "base maps" demos are the most interesting because you can see the new map tiles.



"For the last decade, we've obsessed over building great maps—maps that are comprehensive, accurate, and easy to use," says Google.

You can also check the new colors, the new icons for local business and the corresponding cards.

The new Street View powered by WebGL:

{ Thanks, Florian K. }

Google Play Apps and Services, the New Android Updates

Many people expected to hear some information about a new Android version at the Google I/O keynote. Google decided to focus on new development tools, Google Play Store, Google Play Music and new APIs for Google Play Services.



Actually Google focused on the things it can control and quickly update. Google Play Services is automatically installed by Google Play Store and it adds new APIs that Android apps can use, regardless of the Android version (Play Services requires Android 2.2+). That's a great way to deal with Android fragmentation and it allows Google to announce APIs that can be used by any app and that can reach almost any Android device.

"Devices running Android 2.2 and newer and that have the Google Play Store app automatically receive updates to Google Play services. Enhance your app with the most recent version of Google Play services without worrying about your users' Android version," suggests Google.



For example, Google Play Games services can be used by any Android game to provide features like saving state, leaderboards, achievements, auto-matched players, real-time multiplayer. These services can also be used on iOS and for web apps, so they're even more useful. If Google added these features in Android 4.3, few people could use them and few developers would update their games to support them. Most likely, only Nexus devices would be updated to Android 4.3 shortly after the announcement, while other devices would be updated in 6 months or later or maybe never. Android 4.2 was launched 6 months ago and only 2% of the Android devices run it.



New Android versions are still important, but Google has some other meaningful ways to make Android better. Most Google apps are available in the Play Store and can be updated without waiting for a new Android version. Chrome, Google Search (with Voice Search and Google Now), Google Maps, Google Hangouts, Google Calendar, Google Play Music and the other Play apps can be improved and change the way you use your Android device. Play Services can improve entire categories of apps, add features that improve battery life, make notifications more useful, improve Google+ and Google Maps integration.



Android's flexibility is a double-edged sword. In this case, detaching system apps and APIs from the operating system is a huge advantage and makes new Android versions less important.

How To Save Office 2010 Documents To SkyDrive By Default

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Ever since the release of official SkyDrive client for desktop, millions of Windows users have been using the cloud storage service from Microsoft to keep a backup of crucial documents, pictures, and other files. As you may know, Microsoft Office 2013 offers an option to quickly save documents to your SkyDrive account. If you are [...]

Add Facebook Trusted Contacts To Ensure You Can Recover Your Account

Do you stay in touch with close friends and family via Facebook? How would you feel if you were suddenly locked out of Facebook?

It happens all the time. People forget their password, accounts get hacked, or Facebook decides they have violated the Terms of Service and bans them. And when they try to recover their account, they realize that phone numbers or email addresses they once provided for a potential security check are long out of date. So what can they do to recover their Facebook account?

The Problem

Facebook is notorious for its impersonal customer support. Instead of offering a human to talk to, they prop their online Help Center with admittedly excellent instructions on how to recover your account – in theory. Unfortunately, many cases are special and can not be solved with an automated system. Consequently, Facebook must have been overwhelmed with people trying to contact them in person and cases that required proof of identity. Users have been frustrated with the lack of human assistance and report that it took Facebook weeks to process documents and unlock their accounts.

To address this dilemma, Facebook has now introduced a security feature that let’s your close friends help you recover your account. Facebook previously announced a featured called Trusted Friends , which was available during an initial testing period from October 2011 until early 2012. What they have released now is an overhauled version, which lets you designate friends as Facebook trusted contacts ahead of time, rather than selecting them only when you can no longer access your account. Making your friends confirm your identity is a smart move on Facebook’s part!

How To Add Facebook Trusted Contacts

Trusted Contacts can be added and changed anytime via Security Settings. Click Edit next to Trusted Contacts and click Choose Trusted Contacts.

Then type in the names of friends you trust. For example I have added my sister and friends I am regularly in touch with through Facebook or otherwise.

Next you need to enter your password to confirm the changes.

When you have successfully completed this step, your Facebook trusted contacts will show up under Security Settings. You can edit or remove them anytime.

How To Recover Your Account with Trusted Contacts

From the Facebook Homepage, click Forgot your password? on the top right. Then find your account via your email address, phone number, username or full name. When using your own full name, you may also have to enter a friend’s full name, so Facebook can find the right account. Once it does, Facebook will offer to send a link to reset your password to your email address(es). Since I found my account using my Gmail address, it also offered me the use of the Google account to reset my password.

Click No longer have access to these? if you cannot access your email. You will then be asked to confirm an email address you can access, although that won’t be necessary to recover your account.

In the next step you can reveal your trusted contacts. You need to personally contact three of them, ask them to visit https://www.facebook.com/recover so they receive your recovery codes, collect these codes, and enter them in the form to recover access to your account.

Words Of Caution

Choose your trusted friends wisely. In some places hacking a person’s account is a kind of sport. If you have three close friends who know each other and could potentially team up to play a mischievous trick on you, reconsider. Who can you really trust?

Ask yourself…

• Who would you trust with the key to your apartment?


• Who can you get in touch with outside Facebook and without access to your email account?

The above are your minimum requirements. If you know three or more people who qualify and don’t know each other or would never play a mean trick on you, you have found the perfect candidates to be added as Facebook trusted contacts.

Conclusion

Trusted Contacts are a last resort to recovering your account and probably the most dicey one. And just like any other recovery option, you have to keep them current. What if your friendship ends, your friend stops using Facebook, or cannot be reached for a significant amount of time? Frankly, I think it’s easier to enable Facebook Two Factor Authentication and make sure your backup email addresses and phone numbers are up to date. However, having yet another extra security net doesn’t hurt, but I wouldn’t rely only on Trusted Contacts.

Other Ways To Secure Your Facebook Account

Don’t forget the other basic ways of securing your Facebook account:

Double-check your General Account Settings. Make sure your primary email address is current and add secondary email addresses. Set a secure password. Check your Mobile Settings and add another mobile phone number. Set up Facebook Login Approvals and install the Code Generator on your Android. And finally add Trusted Contacts.

Has your Facebook account ever been hacked and how did you recover it? How do you make sure this never happens (again)?

The post Add Facebook Trusted Contacts To Ensure You Can Recover Your Account appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Chrome, the Most Popular Web Browser

Sometimes it's a good idea to question browser stats. While some companies claim that Chrome loses market share, Google says that the number of active Chrome users increased from 320 million (June 2012) to 750 million. According to Google, Chrome is now the most popular browser in the world.



"With over 750 million active users on Chrome, we're now focused on bringing to mobile the speed, simplicity and security improvements that we've seen on the desktop," says Google.



Sure, this number includes Android users and iOS users. The Android app has less than 100 million downloads, but the number of active users should be lower than the number of downloads.

But what if Google's stats are wrong? After all, Google is the most popular site in the world and owns the most popular analytics service. Not to mention YouTube and Blogger, two other very popular sites.

Google Play Music All Access

That's a long name. It's actually a music subscription service available in the US that's part of Google Play Music.



"Google Play Music All Access is a new monthly music subscription service that lets you listen to millions of songs across your devices. You can create a radio station from any song or artist you love, browse recommendations from our expert music team or explore by genre. (...) It's $9.99 a month, and you can try it free for the first month. Or better yet, start your trial by June 30 and you'll pay only $7.99 a month."

Instead of buying music, you can listen to the entire Google Play catalog. It's not free like Pandora, but you can listen to any song you like, as long as it's available.

New Google+ and Google Hangouts

Google+ has received a major update. There's a new multi-column desktop interface, a new messaging platform and Google+ Photos is a lot smarter.

The desktop Google+ looks different. You can see more content thanks to the new interface that shows up to 3 columns, depending on the window size. "Photos and videos can fill the entire width of the stream, making it easier to scan, and nicer to look at. The sharebox bounces, the menus slide, and the cards flip and fade."



Google+ can now automatically generate hashtags for your posts, so other people can find related content. "Hashtags appearing at the top of a post are related to the post's content. Clicking on a hashtag will let you explore related posts. Hashtags with gray coloring are those used by the author of the post while hashtags with blue coloring are added by Google based on the content of the post. Related hashtags help posts get discovered and build conversations around the content of that post."



If you don't like this feature, you can disable it from the settings.

The unified chat service is not called Babel, the name is Google Hangouts. It replaces the Google Chat sidebar in Google+ and the Gmail Chat box and there are apps for Android and iOS. Google Hangouts combines Google+ Messenger, Google Talk/Chat and the old Hangouts feature, so you can use text chat, video chat, photo sharing and group conversations on the most popular platforms. You only see notifications once, no matter if you're using the desktop sites or the mobile apps. The built-in chat history lets you go back in time and read old conversations.

Google+ Photos is smarter. It can now find your best photos and use Auto Enhance to combine various effects that make your photos look better. "Auto Enhance makes instant adjustments to brightness, saturation and more. Auto Enhance is on by default so every photo you upload will look its best." There's also Auto Awesome, which creates new images from your photos: collages, motion images, HDR photos, panoramic images, improved group photos. Both Auto Enhance and Auto Awesome can be disabled in the settings.

Conversational Voice Search for Desktop

Amit Singhal announced at Google I/O that this is "the end of search as we know it". The future of search goes beyond search results and it has more to do with answering questions, conversations and anticipating user's intentions.



Google has 3 products with similar goals: Knowledge Graph, Voice Search and Google Now. They go hand in hand to deliver the future of search today.



Voice Search has been available on the desktop if you're using Chrome, but now it's much better: it has been upgraded to the conversational voice search released last year for Android and iOS. Just click the microphone icon from the Google search box, ask questions and you'll get a spoken answer. Soon you'll be to just say "OK Google" to trigger voice search.

Google Search for Android added some new Google Now cards: reminders, last train home (Japan only), real time public transit updates and recommendations for books, games and music albums. Google Now can understand things like "remind me to call Susan tomorrow at 10", "when I go to Rome, remind me to buy a new suit" or "remind me to meet Dan when I get to work". You can create both time-based reminders and location-based reminders.

Voice Search is getting more sophisticated, the Knowledge Graph has more facts and connections between concepts, while Google Now gets smarter and tries to anticipate your searches.



{ via Inside Search blog }

Reinventing Google Maps

As anticipated, Google announced a new Google Maps interface for the desktop. It's not publicly available, but you can get an invite here.



The new Google Maps has three goals: creating personalized maps, making maps immersive and building the interface around maps. Just like Google Chrome removed unnecessary interface elements, Google developed a completely new Google Maps service without sidebars, buttons, search results boxes. It's a simplified experience that focuses on the maps.

"The entire map is now interactive. Clicking anywhere will focus the map on that location and show you helpful things, like related places and the best ways to get there."







Directions are easier to use because they integrate flight search and they compare multiple modes on transportation, so you can find the best one. Search results are directly placed on the map: icons and brief descriptions help you determine if they're useful.



Google Maps highlights the places that are important to you and it shows recommendations from experts and your Google+ circles. This way, you get a customized map that emphasizes the things that are relevant to you.



The new interface is powered by WebGL and it brings the Google Earth imagery to the browser without having to use plugins. Google has a different way to show some of the map layers like photos and satellite view, while other layers are missing.







Google will also update the mobile Google Maps apps for Android and iOS this summer and you'll finally get Google Maps for iPad.