Tag Archives: Google Talk

Linux

13 apps that will make you wish you had an Android smartphone

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FP: In most cases, developers prefer to make new smartphone apps for iPhone first, only moving to Android and other platforms once they get some traction.

There are a bunch of great apps that happen to be Android exclusives. Check them out.

AP Photo/Marcio Jose SanchezThere are a bunch of great apps that happen to be Android exclusives. Check them out.

In most cases, developers prefer to make new smartphone apps for iPhone first, only moving to Android and other platforms once they get some traction.

(Android owners who had to wait months for Twitter’s video app Vine know what we’re talking about.)

But there are some outliers. There are a bunch of great apps that happen to be Android exclusives. Check them out.

Ingress is a unique real-world scavenger hunt game.

 

Ingress is a unique real-world scavenger hunt game.

Google

Ingress is a sci-fi game that sends you on a scavenger hunt through the real world to find “hidden” virtual goodies.

Google developed the game. Here’s the plot:

“A mysterious energy has been unearthed by a team of scientists in Europe. The origin and purpose of this force is unknown, but some researchers believe it is influencing the way we think. We must control it or it will control us.”

So, basically, you run around your town trying to find this illusive “energy” before the bad guys do.

Price: Free

Facebook Home turns your home screen into a Facebook photo gallery

Facebook Home turns your home screen into a Facebook photo gallery

William Wei, Business Insider

Facebook Home adds a Facebook-powered wrapper to your Android phone. Instead of seeing your normal lock screen, you get a beautiful slide show of your friends’ Facebook photos and status updates. You can comment and like those updates directly from the lock screen without opening the regular Facebook app.

Price: Free (Only works on select Android phones.)

DeskSMS makes sure you’ll never miss a message again.

DeskSMS makes sure you'll never miss a message again.

DeskSMS is a nifty app that allows you to forward text messages (and picture messages) from your Android smartphone to your desktop via Gmail, Google Talk, and the Chrome Web browser.

Price: Free

WiFi Analyzer lets you determine how strong a wireless network is in your vicinity

WiFi Analyzer lets you determine how strong a wireless network is in your vicinity

Have you ever been stuck on a slow wireless network?

WiFi Analyzer lets you see how strong networks are around you, helping you to pick the fastest, most reliable one.

Price: Free

Weather Bomb gives a data-intensive view of the weather on your Android device

Weather Bomb gives a data-intensive view of the weather on your Android device

Weather Bomb is an extremely detailed weather app that gives users seven days of data.

There are various views, but our favourite is the graph view, which gives the week’s rain, wind, and cloud forecast at a glance.

Other data includes rain, wind, cloud, temperature, pressure humidity and wave height.

Price: Free

Google Skymap lets you know exactly which star you’re staring up at.

Google Skymap is an open sourced app that lets you point your smartphone up at the night sky to decipher constellations, planets, and stars.

Price: Free

Llama Location Profiles uses where you are to change aspects of your phone like ringer and Bluetooth

Llama Location Profiles uses where you are to change aspects of your phone like ringer and Bluetooth

KnowYourMobile

Llama is a nifty app that automatically switches specific phone settings depending on where you are. You can automatically silence your phone when you arrive at your office or turn Bluetooth on at 7 a.m. to pair with your headphones for a morning run.

Best of all, the app doesn’t use your phone’s GPS, which can drain your battery. Instead, it uses cell towers in your area to figure out where you are.

Price: Free

BetterBatteryStats helps you spend more time unplugged.

BetterBatteryStats helps you spend more time unplugged.

BetterBatteryStats lets you analyze your phone’s behavior, pinpointing exactly which applications are causing your battery to drain. Once you know what the culprit is you can specifically fix the issue.

Price: $2.89

APP Lock password protects specific apps.

APP Lock password protects specific apps.

The premise behind APP Lock is simple: password protect installed applications with a password or pattern. Now you don’t have to be nervous when someone else is playing around with your smartphone.

Price: Free

SwiftKey 3 will change how you type on your Android smartphone.

SwiftKey 3 will change how you type on your Android smartphone.

Business Insider / Matthew Lynley

SwiftKey improves your productivity by helping you to type better.

Swiftkey gives much more accurate corrections and predictions than other keyboards. Very sloppy typing will make sense, even if you miss spaces, and SwiftKey 3 also predicts your next words.

Price: $3.99

Tasker lets you automate everything on your smartphone from settings to SMS

Tasker lets you automate everything on your smartphone from settings to SMS

Tasker is an awesome app that lets you tweak specific phone features like turning the flash on for alerts. You can even cancel specific notification pop-ups.

Tasker features more than 200 actions, triggers, and even an app creation section for making your own app.

Price: $6.49

Friday helps you discover new things to do

Friday helps you discover new things to do

Friday’s makers say that the app brings self discovery to your life by introducing the first passive auto journal.

Friday captures your entire life through your phone and builds a timeline of the things you do. You can even filter and search your life to find the exact information you want.

Friday allows you to share and log your favourite activities that you’ve been doing all day.

Price: Free

Robin is a great alternative to Apple’s Siri

Robin is a great alternative to Apple's Siri

Before Google Now, Robin was the first true Siri challenger.

We love the expanded capabilities of the newer virtual assistant. You can ask Robin for directions, local places, real-time parking, traffic info, gas prices, weather, your Twitter news, and much more.

Robin is disrupting the personal assistant arena, and we only hope that her existence pushes developers to make personal assistant apps feel more like true personal assistants.

Price: Free

…read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Linux Today

Computers

Trojan horse malware destroys delivery files to hide its tactics

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Microsoft has discovered an unusually stealthy Trojan capable of deleting files it downloads in order to keep them away from forensics investigators and researchers.

The Trojan downloader, called Win32/Nemim.gen!A, is the latest example of how malware writers are using sophisticated techniques to protect their own trade secrets. The Trojan essentially makes downloaded component files irrecoverable, so they cannot be isolated and analyzed.

“During analysis of the downloader, we may not easily find any downloaded component files on the system,” Jonathan San Jose, a member of Microsoft’s Malware Protection Center, said in a blog post. “Even when using file recovery tools, we may see somewhat suspicious deleted file names but we may be unable to recover the correct content of the file.”

Microsoft managed to grab some components as they were being downloaded from a remote server. The malware’s two purposes was to infect executable files in removable drives, and to unleash a password stealer to snatch credentials from email accounts, Windows Messenger/Live Messenger, Gmail Notifier, Google Desktop, and Google Talk.,

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From: http://www.csoonline.com/article/731868/Microsoft_finds_Trojan_that_hides_files_to_evade_analysis#tk.rss_all

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Is Google Finally About to Get Serious About Messaging?

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By Evan Niu, CFA, The Motley Fool

Headless Drive Through Prank

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For a company that’s been trying to focus more lately, Google‘s current amalgam of various messaging services is in dire need of some unification. The search giant has a plethora of different offerings geared toward mobile and desktop messaging, and none of them have made major impacts on the market.

Google Talk is a desktop platform for chatting and video calls. Google Voice offers free SMS texting, but requires using a separate number. Google Plus Hangouts are meant for group video chats, and Google Plus Messenger is geared toward messaging on the go. That’s a lot of services that are needlessly distinct, since a unified service would have greater brand strength.

This is nothing new; Google product manager Nikhyl Singhal conceded last summer that the company has “done an incredibly poor job servicing [its] users here,” noting that Big G was planning to merge the services. The name of the unified service has been rumored to be Google Babel, which is expected to be a cross-platform chat service available on Android, Apple iOS, Chrome, Google Plus, and Gmail.

Last week, a Digital Trends report suggested that Google was in talks to acquire popular cross-platform messaging app WhatsApp for upwards of $1 billion. The search giant and the mobile start-up have been at the negotiating table for a little over a month, with the latter still trying to fetch more.

Source: WhatsApp.

WhatsApp has promptly taken off as an SMS alternative, since the service uses existing phone numbers, supports numerous different operating system platforms, and uses existing data plans in lieu of SMS plans. For $0.99 and no ads or in-app purchases, that’s quite a value proposition that wireless carriers are none too happy about, and why the app is the No. 2 paid app in Apple’s App Store currently.

Apple’s iMessage has also taken off in popularity, in part because of its tight integration with iDevices so there are no extra steps required by users. On the last conference call, CEO Tim Cook mentioned that the company now sends 2 billion iMessages per day. iMessage also ties into Apple’s desktop platform, offering another layer of convenience. On the video chatting front, Apple also has FaceTime.

Facebook has also been beefing up its mobile messaging capabilities. Not only does it offer texts and media, but the social network even just added free voice calling to its iOS Messenger app, using the phone’s data connection. Facebook just wants to be the sole communications medium between you and your friends, even if it doesn’t monetize messaging directly.

Apple, Google, and Facebook are all vying for messaging domination, much to the chagrin of wireless carriers. It’s about time for Google to finally get serious.

As one of the most dominant Internet companies ever, Google has made a habit of driving strong returns for its shareholders. However, like many other web companies, it’s also struggling to adapt to an increasingly mobile …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Computers

Review: CloudMagic Lives Inside Windows 8

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CloudMagic has gone Metro. The excellent search service, which I’ve been a fan of since it made its debut in 2010, is now available as a native application for Windows 8’s Metro interface. CloudMagic’s Windows 8 edition still delivers super-speedy, accurate search results across a host of services, but it is a bit hamstrung by some of Windows 8’s own problems.

You can download the CloudMagic app from Microsoft’s Windows Store, and it installs quickly. If you already have a CloudMagic account, the app remembers all of your settings, and doesn’t need much in the way of set up: You log in and you’re good to go.

If you don’t have a CloudMagic account already, the signup process is simple, and it’s easy to link the services you’d like it to search. CloudMagic currently searches the following services: AOL, Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Gmail, Google Apps, Google Drive, Google Talk, GMX, Hotmail, iCloud, Mail.com, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, Microsoft Office 365, MSN, Outlook.com, SkyDrive, Twitter, Windows Live, and Yahoo Mail. You simply grant CloudMagic access to the accounts you’d like it to search, and it goes to work indexing them.

While the basics are the same, the actual experience of using CloudMagic as a Windows 8 Metro app is very different from using it in your browser, as an extension. Where the browser extension displays results right on the Web page you’re viewing, the Metro app is its own standalone app. You search from within the app itself and see all of the results in there, too.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

Review: CloudMagic's personalized Web search service grows up

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CloudMagic is growing up. This super-speedy search service debuted a few years ago and over time has evolved to offer some very useful features, including Facebook and Twitter search. Now, though, CloudMagic is making some of its biggest changes yet, including the ability to integrate your personal search results with Google’s global Web results. And the company is no longer offering unlimited searches for free, a move that may alienate some users. However, 50 free searches a month will suffice for many; the unlimited searches of the Pro subscription costs $5 a month.

CloudMagic’s core search tools work the same as always: you sign up for an account, and link the services you’d like it to search. It supports a huge range of services, including AOL, Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Gmail, Google Apps, Google Talk, GMX, Hotmail, iCloud, Mail.com, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, Microsoft Office 365, MSN, Outlook.com, SkyDrive, Twitter, Windows Live, and Yahoo.

Once access has been granted, CloudMagic then begins indexing your accounts, which can take some time if your accounts are sizable. It took several hours to index a Gmail account containing thousands of messages, but only a few minutes to index a newer Twitter account. You can begin searching right away, but waiting until the indexing process is complete will deliver more accurate results.

CloudMagic displays your own personal results in an unobtrusive box that appears alongside Google’s Web results.

The service is still available as it has been in the past, as a browser extension for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, an add-on for Internet Explorer, and a mobile app for the iPad, iPhone, and Android devices.  The browser extensions and add-ons appear as simple search box on any relevant Web pages; if you surf to a page that doesn’t support CloudMagic, you don’t see the box. You can move the search box around the page if it’s in your way, and you can minimize it to a corner, too.

You enter your keywords in the search box, and CloudMagic goes to work, instantly (and I do mean instantly) displaying results as you type. The results appear in a column that appears below the CloudMagic search box as soon as you begin typing. Results are organized by source; if you enter a search string while on your Gmail page, you’ll see results from there, but you also can scroll down to see results from your other accounts, like Facebook and Twitter. In CloudMagic’s latest iteration, the results are as accurate as speedy as they have always been.

What’s new about CloudMagic is how you can access its search results. It  is no longer limited to displaying results in its own search box. CloudMagic now lets you see your personal CloudMagic results when conducting Google searches. This feature, which is available using Chrome, Firefox, and Safari with the browser extension installed (except Internet Explorer) works whenever you enter a search query in Google. CloudMagic displays …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld