Out of all the updates that Microsoft made to Windows Phone 8.1, Cortana has to be the one that makes most of an impact. For some time now the phone platform has been struggling to keep up with its rivals but with the addition of a personal assistant, hopefully it can start to keep a better pace. Much like Siri and Google Voice, Cortana is personable (well, as person-like as a phone can be anyway!) and even brings a couple of unique small features that its counterparts don’t have. It’s important to remember that Cortana is still in Beta and therefore still needs further development but so far it’s looking good. Let’s see how the features stack up against Siri and Google Voice.

HEAD TO HEAD

Cortana pulls its information from personal usage patterns and a database of users. Over time, as more people use it, its ability to understand natural language and accents will improve. To access it you just press and hold the search button from the home screen. It can follow commands to launch calls, emails and texts and can even understand more complex instructions like “Call dad on speakerphone”. Siri too can carry out these more involved directions but Google Voice cannot.

Where Cortana does fall down is understanding punctuation. So if you are dictating a text message to a  personal assistant, it may go like this: “Hi [comma] how are you [question mark]” – this will result in a text that reads “Hi, how are you?”. Unfortunately Cortana takes the punctuation literally and will type the words comma or question mark into the text. This definitely needs to be sorted if Cortana is to be in the same league as the more experienced personal assistants.

The Notebook is a handy feature of Cortana; it not only keeps track of your personal preferences but when it is opened it will also give you information like the weather forecast and traffic reports. Even in an idle state, you can check the latest news reports. From here you can also set “quiet hours”, a period of time where you receive no notifications for messages etc., if you want some peace and quiet.

Alarms and Reminders Settings

As far as setting alarms goes, it is easy. You can either ask it to “set alarm for 6.30am” or even “wake me up in 30 minutes”. Cortana and Siri will both cancel alarms for you too but Google Voice will not. All three will schedule calendar events for you but only Siri will cancel them – Cortana and Google Voice require you to remove them manually.

If you want to set a reminder using Cortana, it will expect you to give it a specific time. However, a unique feature allows you link reminders to your contacts. So for instance you can request “The next time I speak to John, remind me to ask him the train times”. When one of your next calls or texts, a reminder will pop up, allowing you to either complete the reminder or postpone it.

Staying on the subject of relationships, Siri and Google Voice both allow you to link names with relationships, so you can tell them “Stephanie is my sister”. With Cortana you have to manually set relationships via the Inner Circle area within Cortana’s Notebook menu. It could be that Microsoft will eventually change this.

Scores

Overall Cortana is looking good. It certainly has plenty of features that enable it to compete with the likes of Siri and Google Voice. If only Microsoft could make some changes to the way it recognizes punctuation and make it easier to set relationships within your contacts, it could be that Cortana becomes the superior personal assistant.

GOOGLE BLOCKS DEMONOID FOR MALICIOUS SOFTWARE

In one of the harshest moves a search engine can take against a site, during the past few hours Google flagged torrent site Demonoid as likely to harm users' computers. After arriving at the conclusion that malicious third-party ads had caused the problem, Demonoid responded by disabling every single advert on its site until further notice.

In recent months, entertainment industry bodies have been working hard to ensure that companies become more aware of where their ads are being placed, with the aim of strangling site finances and eliminating any idea that brands are in partnership with pirates.

Just recently the tactic branched out into describing most leading pirate sites as malware havens, a claim that some described as exaggerated. However, during the past few hours a pretty big and related drama hit semi-private torrent site Demonoid.

After being off-air for 20 months after hosting trouble in Ukraine, the site relaunched this March. Former members of the site were pleased to find that their old logins worked and ever since the site has been trying to get back to its former glory. Yesterday, however, problems with third party adds provoked a harsh response from Google, one that continues today.

Those searching for Demonoid are currently warned in search listings that “This site may harm your computer” and even those who choose to ignore the warnings aren’t allowed to access the site via Google. Instead they are diverted to the following page:

                                    WARNING

Google’s advisory reports that after checking 59 pages on the site during the past 90 days, 7 pages resulted in “malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent”, something likely to worry most users.

Google goes on to report that the malicious software in question was hosted on another domain – adv-inv-net.com – and further investigation reveals that the site is the source of a huge number of problems.

According to malware analysis the Romanian-hosted domain carries 177 exploits and 2 trojans, which together have led to the infection of not only Demonoid, but more than 2,000 other sites.

Aware that Demonoid along with thousands of other sites had been blacklisted by most search engines and web browsers, Demonoid’s operators announced that all advertisements would be removed from the site until the problem could be identified.

“We run content from a lot of ad networks in our ad banners, and a lot of banners from each,” the management team said in an announcement.

“One of those banners started serving malware, so we disabled all ads until we are 100% sure of the culprit and get it removed. We are also taking the proper steps to get us out of all the blacklists.”

This latest advertising controversy comes just a week after the publication of a report which claimed that 90% of the Internet’s top 30 “pirate” sites contain malware, “potentially unwanted programs”, or items designed to deceive.

While seemingly not Demonoid’s fault in this instance, one has to question if these kinds of malware events will become more prevalent in the months to come. With entertainment industry companies scaring away advertisers, options for torrent and streaming site operators to do business with ‘up-front’ ad networks are likely to narrow, forcing them further into the arms of those who carry the kind of junk experienced in the past 24 hours.

It’s an unfortunate fact that a lot of us around the world suffer from various allergies. And, since Spring is in the air (at least where I live) it means the allergies are also getting in full swing. So, when the pollen (or whatever your poison is) increases in the air, so do the itching eyes, the running noses, and the sneezes that won’t seem to quit no matter what medicine you take.

While there are countless allergy medications a person can take, they can only do so much at the end of the day. But, if you have a little extra money somewhere in the house, there’s a new air purifier from Honeywell that might just help you get through the day a little easier with less itching and fewer sneezes. I’d go so far as to call it a “smart” air purifier, because it works based on how severe your allergies are/will be on a certain day. The Honeywell HPA250B has a bluetooth connection (of course it does) that pairs with your smartphone to read the allergy reports for the day. And, depending on the level of your allergens on a certain day, it will do more or less purifying. Sounds good to me!

The only thing it doesn’t do is come cheap – it’ll run you around $270. As long as you have an iOS or Android-powered device, you can download the Honeywell app and use it in conjunction with the air purifier.

And Also A Helpful App For Asthma Patients

The app and peak flow meter from AsthmaMD is a leap forward in the monitoring of asthma attacks and the collection of data.  Founder of AsthmaMD, Dr. Sam Pejham and Salim Madjd, who is the start-ups’ app designer, have said that AsthmaMD 3.0 is the firm’s latest product and it is “essentially a brand new app coded from scratch and it’s our most significant release yet.” AsthmaMD 3.0 makes it simpler for physicians to create easy to follow action plans or even a written plan, which is designed for each individual patient to guide day-to-day care, as well as management of symptoms that are becoming increasingly worse.

The platform is now inclusive of the patent-pending asthma action plan, (or a treatment plan) for patients, that is developed with the assistance of their doctors. The app also has an integrated medication reminder system and the ability to track and log asthma symptoms from numerous devices, with data saved to AsthmaMD’s very own secure cloud. The AsthmaMD’s peak flow meter, which is a key part of its monetization strategy, is now available in some Walgreens and CVS stores.

“We had to find a way to continue providing the app for free while running a business. We pivoted and analyzed various options that would still allowed us to stay true to our mission of modernizing asthma care,” wrote Madjd and Pejham.

AsthmaMD 3.0 not only makes it simpler for doctors to create individual asthma plans, but the platform is then broken down into simple interactive steps for the patient to follow.  “Eighty percent of asthmatics do not have proper education and understanding of the differences between control and rescue medications. With AsthmaMD 3.0 we made education an implicit part of the experience. With every opportunity we are delineating the differences in these medications…Over 55% of asthmatics are unaware their asthma is not well controlled, which has shown to have direct correlation of increase risk of hospitalization, urgent medical needs, and reduced quality of life.” they added.  Patients can send the data to their doctors, who can then monitor how effectively each action plan is working.

What do you think?

Microsoft To Hold Surface Event On May 20

Last month, we heard talks about Microsoft working hard at releasing a Surface Mini this year, but as is usual with these things, we didn’t have anything solid to work on. Yesterday, however, the big names in tech media published reports about receiving invites to a “small” Surface event on the 20th of May.
“Breaking news” about the “small” Surface event was all over the place yesterday, with leading to speculation as to what we can expect about the event.

One thing’s pretty obvious: Microsoft is going the Apple route of teasing the media – and the general public – with announcements to events. The word small in quotation marks, we believe, is definitely word play on the size of the Surface that’s going to be the highlight of the event.

And this brings us back to all that talk about the Surface Mini.

Microsoft’s Surface line has not been able to reach the levels of success that its competitors have, but the general consensus is that it is best for productivity purposes, with business people being the main users. Microsoft is not ruling out the possibility of adding a fun factor to the Surface, though as seen in a recent video ad featuring a bakery owner from New York.

With the likely pending launch of a 7 to 8-inch Surface Mini, the company just might have a fighting chance in the tablet wars. It might not win – probably won’t, actually – but a smaller tablet will definitely attract more users.

This is not to say that the May 20 event will definitely be about the Surface Mini, but I think I’m willing to bet on that – just for the sake of betting, no money involved!

So what do you think the May 20 event will be about?

The 3Doodler 3D printing pen is a fantastic gadget.  You can have loads of fun, literally creating things in thin air and that will always be a great selling point for the pen.  However it is not a fine precision instrument, is it?  The pen itself is big and the mid-air drawing can get very messy.

Enter a new kid on the block. Lix believes that professionals require something that is more accurate.  The company has therefore decided to crowdfund a 3D pen of a superior quality and precision. The 3D printer pen is approximately as slim and comfortable as a technical drawing pen.  The dimensions give it the sort of accuracy that you require for air-drawn artwork.  The 3D pen can even accomplish prototyping for architecture and fashion items.  The device is also easier to carry as requires it’s power from a USB port, rather than a wall outlet like other devices.

It look like Lix made the right move by approaching the market through Kickstarter as they have already met their funding target in one day.  This means that an £82 ($135) pledge will get you the production 3D pen and some starter plastic filament, when the device ships in December 2014.

The Lix 3D printing pen is more expensive than the $99 3Doodler, but the company thinks that the sleek design merits the premium of the product.

You can check out the Kickstarter campaign here.

Please leave a sensible comment below.

Samsung to pay $119.6 million in fines to Apple

The jury in the lengthy Apple vs Samsung patent trial have found Samsung guilty of infringing on patents 5,946,647, 5,946,647 and 8,046,721 held by Apple. The first two patents are pertaining to the autocorrect function and slide to unlock seen on many Samsung devices, while the third patent deals with links which allows users to open apps within the device. For infringing three of these patents, Samsung has been ordered to pay $119.6 million.

It’s not all bad news for Samsung though as Apple was found to be infringing one of Samsung’s patents 6,226,449 which is related to the camera and photo organization technology. But the fines levied is a paltry $158,400 which is spare change for a billion dollar company like Apple.

This new ruling could directly affect the pricing of future Samsung products as the company tries to gain back some of the fine amount. Apple’s original claim of $2 billion wasn’t accepted by the court, but the company is still reportedly content with the $119.6 million fine imposed on Samsung and believes that justice has prevailed. The court however didn’t agree to every accusation made by Apple as a couple of its allegations were rejected.

The Spying Lamps

Lamps That Spy On People & Tweet Their Conversations

Be careful what you say in public. No, really – be careful what you say in public because you just never know who or what may be listening to your words. It could be the person sitting at the table beside you. It could be the waitress who overhears part of your conversation as she’s coming to take your order. It could be the person standing behind you as you’re waiting in line. Or, it could be one of the lamps residing on top of your table. Especially if you’re in New York City. I wish I was kidding, but I’m totally serious.

It has recently come to light that 2 people who wanted to try their hand at hidden surveillance did just that in the Big Apple. They went to Washington Square Park and put hidden wi-fi enabled listening devices inside of lamps at a bank, a library, McDonalds, and of all places, someone’s bedroom. But that’s not the end of the story. After the conversations are recorded by the lamps, they’re sent to Mechanical Turk, where they are transcribed and then tweeted out on Twitter. This has been going on for about 7 months under the Twitter handle @Conversnitch. Kyle McDonald and Brian House, who are behind the spying, state that they want people to be extra cautious about being watched.

That Lamp Does More Than Just Light Up The Room

While this may seem (and probably is) slightly unethical, the pair seem to want to teach us all a lesson, that if they’re able to do this, just imagine what the government is able to do without our knowledge. It’s scary when you actually stop and think about it.

So, that old adage “be careful what you say” is never more true than it today’s world, because you never know who – or, what – is listening to your conversations.

Best Translation Apps For SmartPhones & Tablet

When I’m on holiday, one of my pet hates is when someone doesn’t make any effort to speak or converse in the native language. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve seen and heard people talking slowly and loudly to some poor waiter who still has no idea what they are saying. So seeing as the holiday season is fast approaching, why not get yourself a translation app. I’ve picked out three apps, which will help all of us get to grips with the basics of any language and make ourselves understood. And of course make the lives of all waiters far easier!

Google Translate

Google Translate can decipher 80 languages and allows you to speak, write or type your query. The Favourites section means you can save common phrases that you may need regularly, a really handy feature if you are planning on spending any length of time in a foreign country. This app is renowned for being one of the best apps for handwritten languages like Chinese or Japanese.

iTranslate Voice

Using iTranslate Voice, you can speak a word or phrase and the app will reply in up to 42 target languages. If you have been misunderstood then just tap the pencil icon to correct it. What I thought was a great function with this app is that you can pair up over Wi-Fi with someone else who also has the iTranslate Voice app. You can both converse in your own native languages and the app will translate for you - fantastic for helping break down language barriers.

iTranslate

iTranslate has been created by the same developer that gave us iTranslate Voice. This app supports over 80 languages and allows you to translate via text input, however you can add voice recognition as well as other features and remove ads, with an in-app purchase. It also supports character input for Chinese and Japanese. This is an excellent app if you want quick and easy translations from symbol characters to written words. There is also a text prediction, meaning it will try and guess what word or phrase you want translating - a handy tool if you want to get your point across quickly.

Snapchat update adds Iive video chats and more

Popular photo messaging app Snapchat has just received a new update adding live video chat and more. The Android version of the app has arrived in the Google Play Store and we have details of the changes coming right up. Meanwhile the update for the iOS version is expected to arrive before too much longer.

This has been a much-awaited update as many people were hoping to see instant messaging supported added to Snapchat and at last that’s what we get. Users with the updated version of the app can now swipe on a friends name in the inbox to begin chatting and can also share photos and videos. Messages can be saved by tapping them, but if not then they are cleared once the chat screen is left.

Live video chat is another great addition, and users now just need to press and hold for live video sharing. As long as users keep a finger on the display the video chat continues. If you want to alternate between the rear and front cameras this can also be done simply by sliding a finger to the top or bottom of the screen.

We’ve had a YouTube video from Snapchat, this story that gives a glimpse of what’s on offer with the new update to give you a better idea. If you want to download Snapchat for Android with this latest update you can do so at Google Play here. We’d love to know what you think of the changes to Snapchat, so why not drop us a comment using the box below.

Google Fiber has unquestionably been making waves with their free and low-cost internet service packages.  Recently a document was circulated to the next 34 cities that are slated to receive the service next year in 2015.  Google has hinted that there also might be plans to roll out WiFi services to those cities in addition to Google wired fiber connections.  Whilst Google did not give any specific details regarding this, they definitely have alluded to wireless services that would provide a service that is above and beyond their standard fiber connections.

Google offers a basic broadband package free of charge and 1Gbps for $70 per month.  You can add an additional TV package for $120 per month.  By offering these packages at ludicrous prices, Google is undercutting the competition extensively. While Google is already a strong competitor in the areas of limited service, this could be a bad news for companies that are trying to compete in those sectors.

Detailed information was requested about the potential cities for candidacy; such as information about addresses, building structures, and various outdoor obstacles such as utility poles and sewer access. The candidates have until May 1st to respond to Google to decide if they want Google’s Internet services.

In addition to this, Google is looking for the cities to give them information about the possible locations for a number of “huts” which may be in situ for approximately 20 years or so. It is these huts that will house all of the required equipment for the Google network.  As soon as all of the required information has been received, Google will then make a decision on which sites to go ahead with. So alhough there is no particular information on the alleged WiFi services, the firm is expecting to update their Google Fiber plans by the end of 2014.

SOURCE: http://www.talkandroid.com/204730-google-could-soon-be-offering-wifi-service-to-all-cities-with-google-fiber

If you would like to leave a sensible comment, then please do so in the comments section below.

Tizen OS Expectations

The consumer electronics industry has a secret ingredient: the Tizen operating system. It is alive and well and may control a device you now use or the next one you buy.

That might surprise some early adopters who watch eagerly for the next bleeding-edge electronics device. Many of those who have heard of Tizen are under the impression that it has no consumer or developer-ready devices in the market place. They're wrong.

Tizen already is fully developed as an operating system and deployed in numerous product lines. They typically have the word "smart" in their name -- you know, things like smartTV, smartphone, smartwatch, smartcamera and yes, smart refrigerator. It can be found in in-vehicle infotainment systems as well.

"Tizen has been used in products for a long time before it was even formally announced," Brian Warner, director of client services and operations at the Linux Foundation and manager of the Tizen Project, told LinuxInsider.

"To be honest, this does not surprise me. The whole point in buying a camera is to take some nice photographs -- not what the operating system is," he said. "It is not a question of how many units did Tizen sell in the first quarter after being introduced. Instead, Tizen came out with a whisper and not with a bang."

Tizen

Tizen is an open source project housed within the Linux Foundation. The Tizen Association last year launched a partner program with 36 companies from all segments of the mobile and connected device ecosystems.

Its purpose is to help accelerate the development and commercialization of the Tizen OS. The partners include operators, application developers and independent software vendors.

Rather than courting consumers, the Tizen Association is ramping up its focus on developers with commercial devices now available so they can easily port existing apps to Tizen.

In fact, the upcoming third annual Tizen Developer Conference in June will explore the new opportunities Tizen is creating in the new era of the Internet of Things.

In this exclusive interview, LinuxInsider discusses with Brian Warner why the Tizen Project is starting to cause a stir as it challenges Linux and Android as the preferred embedded control system for smart devices.

LinuxInsider: Is Tizen expected to replace Android and Linux as alternatives to iOS and Windows Phone platforms, or is it designed for more than mobile computing?

Brian Warner: The original idea behind Tizen was the concept of creating a divergence operating system. The goal was to create something that would work for different types of devices. One of them was a mobile phone. For a number of years what everybody wanted to talk about was the phone, because that is where the drama is. The market contest was thought to be between Samsung versus Google versus anything else in the market.

While all that was going on, Tizen quietly grew into favor with a variety of other products. So as a convergence operating system, we are definitely seeing the fruits of that. A number of cameras that came out are running Tizen. Since last year, there are also refrigerators and TVs coming. So we really are seeing Tizen getting a lot of uptake in a lot of things other than phones.

How is Tizen different from other platforms so far?

Warner: On one hand, you could say that Tizen really is not much different from the way other companies were using Linux and open source. It just so happens that Samsung has a brand name associated with what they are doing with Tizen.

If you look at what many consumer electronics developers were doing, many of them standardized on a single convergence platform such as WebOS, or would buy something from Wind River. Or maybe you use different ways to get to your internal operating system. But either way, pretty much everybody standardized on something.

You refer to Tizen as a convergence platform. What is it structurally, a spinoff of a Linux distro or Android, or something else entirely?

Warner: I would say Tizen is like a Linux distro without really being a full distro. When we think of a Linux distro, we envision a preinstalled set of packages that are supported with a repository for updating. Tizen is very similar to that. It does provide a Linux kernel, the core utilities, a display and a user interface.

It has everything you would need to run a device. But Debian Linux, for instance, has an extensive repository. Tizen does not have that. A good way to look at Tizen would be as something like Android without the Google Play Store. It is an operating system. It comes with a separate store that comes along with it. Right now, that is being provided by Samsung. So Tizen is a real operating system.

That said, is it accurate to classify Tizen as a fork of Android, which is a form of Linux, or as another flavor of Linux?

Warner: Tizen is a flavor of Linux. It is definitely not a fork of Android. That would imply that it incorporates nearly all of what Android is. I would say that Tizen is a Linux-based operating system. If you look at the broader picture and think beyond Samsung, Intel would probably say it wants people building embedded devices to use the Intel chip to consider using Tizen as an operating system for that device.

So Intel is already using Tizen to run its embedded chips?

Warner: Yes, if you look at the embedded industry and in particular the System on a Chip (SoC) platters, the chip maker has to provide an OS to go along with it. It does not matter whether you are providing a plug-in card or a whole System on a Chip. Whoever you are providing it to is going to say, "I need to have something that will actually boot this thing up and have an interface to it."

One of the things we are hearing from Intel very strongly has been that they want Tizen considered for all types of devices. This is a valid option that makers can use as they are putting together their embedded devices.

How different will the Tizen user experience be for one of the consumer electronics market's most wanted product, the phone?

Warner: It comes down to when you start the device and see the controls, the user interface it has does not have to be the user interface it was shipped with. Think in a much broader direction. Think about the evolution of the smartphone market.

The arrival of the iPhone was the first thing that actually convinced us we should be concerned with what is in our pockets. We care about apps. We care about updates. We care about available memory. Then the Android phones came out. Everyone in the industry learned that there is room for more than just Apple in the smartphone marketplace.

Still, everything still looked the same -- so how will a Tizen device disrupt the market?

Warner: 

But then different Android phone makers altered the look and the interface so specific phones started to stand out from the others on the shelf. We had all these different user interfaces -- for instance, TouchWiz and Sense. The result was that all of these different interfaces fragmented the heck out of Android.

But isn't that degree of differentiation good for individual device makers?

Warner: That fragmentation convinced these companies that there was money to be made with smartphones, but then eventually Google stepped in and said the fragmentation was out of control. Google started to bring everything back into line. What you find now is that when you shop for Android phones in the store, they all pretty much look the same.

Why won't that happen with Tizen if device makers can make their own modifications?

Warner: When you look at Tizen, a lot of the companies working with the Tizen Association said that this model worked very well for Android -- but the Tizen companies want to be able to innovate on interface and stock apps but are not able to do that with Android. So the individual phone makers are now going to be able to take the stock Tizen interface off and replace it with something that will let it look different than everything else on the shelf.

So when a user picks up a Tizen device, he is not going to see one clearly branded Tizen screen. Tizen is going to be under the hood. That is the big appeal to product developers. They can put their own spin on what the end-user is going to be looking at and still have Tizen under the hood and not compete with something else that looks the same way.

How does this support the concept of open source?

Warner: The value of using open source is that you are not reinventing the wheel. There is zero strategic value in redeveloping an operating system. If your competitors are all using Linux anyhow, they are going to get a multiyear jump on you in getting their product to the market unless you are using open source. In this case, Tizen is the skeleton, but the clothes you put on it is up to the developer to decide. That is the big distinguishing characteristic from everything else that is out there.

How does Tizen play out that open source concept in other product markets?

Warner: Everything we have available so far with Tizen has a user-focused air about it. The users have no reason to focus on the operating system. For example, if it is a camera, the only concern is how long from the time I turn on the camera can I take a photo? For the smartwatch, it is how long is the battery going to last? For a smartTV, the consumer's question is how long does it take to boot up into the navigational system? For a refrigerator, it is how cold does it keep the fruit? These are the things users care about. They do not care about what is the operating system. That was the whole idea about taking that question off the top of the device. You should not care about that.

How is Tizen different in controlling a broad base of products when embedded Linux and other embedded proprietary operating systems are already being used?

Warner: In most, if you are a manufacturer, you have to roll your own OS version. Or you take something like Android and take the UI off and hack it to the point that it will fit in to whatever your design is. The real value in Tizen is that it frees manufacturers from having to maintain their own in-house version of Linux. Instead, this provides something where thoughtful companies can get together and work on this common piece of technology.

Why will that approach not allow groups of manufacturers to create a version of Tizen that essentially fragments the ecosystem?

Warner: To be totally clear on the fragmenting issue, one of the purposes of the design of Tizen is to allow for specialization without getting fragmentation. The goal of the Tizen Association is to ensure that all of the common elements that manufacturers need are in place -- things like all of the libraries and drivers, for instance.

But with Tizen, these elements are underneath what the user sees or uses directly. We do not care how the icons are laid out on the screen. You can use squares. You can use circles. You can use whatever you want. As long as the things that are down below the surface of the user's level function, then we avoid that fragmentation.