Fortysomething Geek: Google

Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

ReTUNES. The Android iTunes remote control review.

I like my new HTC ONE M8 but I really don't have any music on it. I know it has an awesome audio processor and it probably sounds good but it doesn't carry my large iTunes library. More importantly, it doesn't stream music to my 12 speaker set-up like my iPhone. For me, Google's Music is not a suitable substitute for iTunes. You can't Chromecast to multiple audio receivers simultaneously or have multiple clients play your library at the same time (through Match or Network sharing). Thus, iTunes is still relevant. At home, I still rely on my multi-room, multi-speaker iTunes Airplay set-up. I like to listen to music across my three floor house in various rooms and I use my iPhone or iPad to control the music. Now, there is an option for Android and it works pretty good with the HTC ONE. That app is called ReTunes.

ReTunes is basically a smartphone remote control for iTunes. Meaning, it will allow you to control a computer running iTunes. It is the Android equivalent of the iOS Remote Control app that Apple provides for i-devices.If you have a centralize iTunes server with multiple AirPlay set-up, this app is pretty much it for Android users. The user experience is comparable to Apple remote app.

I think it is best to go over screenshots to discuss some of the functionalities.

First of all, you need to enable the iTunes remote control via a numeric key pairing. Simple set-up. You also have to be on the same Wi-Fi subnet.

You then select the paired iTunes machine/server. You can pair multiple computers and I've paired it to three. I don't know what the maximum number is but I doubt most people will have more than three iTunes servers running in their household.

Playback, track, searching, selection is the same as you would use on your desktop but in a smartphone UI. You can even enable visualization, shuffle,etc.

It does an excellent job as a remote control. What else would you want? Well, for me, the primary reason to use this is to control my Airplay speakers. I love how I am listening to music in my living room and select the basement to simultaneously play in the basement. As I walk down the stairs, I can shut off the living room while the song is still playing. Once I free up the living room, my wife or anyone else can initiate control over the living room.

Lastly, one surprising feature is how ReTunes picks up my iTunes Radio station.

There you have it. One really good iTunes remote app for the Android ecosystem. If you are Android user stuck on iTunes, this is the app you should have on your primary homescreen. It is that good.

Link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.squallydoc.retune&hl=en

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

HTC ONE M8, Android Kit Kat SD Card issues. Originally 128GB sdxc review

This blog post was originally meant to be a review on a new SanDisk 128GB micro-sdhc card with my new HTC ONE M8. Let me repeat, that is 128GB micro-sdhc! How insane is that with that much storage on a micro-sd? The whole idea was tantalizing. In reality, it didn't turn out the way I hoped for. SD cards are pretty much useless on the new HTC ONE.

The latest version of Android, KitKat 4.4.2 has rendered my nice, 128GB sd card useless. Yep, the smart folks at Google, in their infinite wisdom have closed one of the biggest compelling feature of Android (over iOS) for this user. Why oh why you must ask? Well, I suppose they want to get serious about security and are now implementing a sandbox model where apps only have write access to their germane folders.

In short, this means, I can't even benchmark this sdcard. Most benchmark apps can't write to the root of the sd card which is a big no-no. I can't even copy files from an OTG USB drive using ES File Explorer. Forget about doing something like this pictured below. Everything is borked now. File Explorer/Manager apps are pretty much useless. I can't even copy files around on the Phone itself. The workaround is to root the phone and patch it which I'm not going to do.

There are hundreds if not thousands of articles, posts, blogs about this issue so I won't re-hash it. So why is this a big deal? Well, now I have to tether my phone to my laptop if I want to copy files. Yep, this is the same iTunes-iPhone argument Android users have been making years. I have to use the HTC desktop Sync Manager to copy files over which is really cumbersome and slow. And the Desktop app has no method of moving files around so I'll have to delete and re-upload.

So how about just popping out the sd card and copy files from my laptop? Sure, I can do that if I have a handy paperclip at a moment's notice as pictured below.

In short, I am highly disappointed. An expensive SanDisk Ultra 128GB micro-sd card is pretty much useless to me now. Not exactly useless but highly under-utilized on the HTC ONE M8. I'm thinking about just popping back the 64GB sd card I had before and call it a day. I figure I could use the 128GB card on another device (Dell Venue 8 Pro or one of my cameras) so I can have full enjoyment of it.

Friday, April 4, 2014

The HTC ONE (M8) 2014 model Preliminary overview / review

For as long as I can remember, I have been a dual OS phone user. First with Windows Mobile and iOS. Then with iOS and Android. I've always carried two, three phones on me at all times.

I've owned and carried several Android phones through the years - Moto Droid, Droid Incredible, Galaxy Nexus. None of those phones kept my interest besides the fact they were partially work issued. Now, in 2014, my latest work issued phone is the HTC ONE (M8). This is HTC's current flagship phone. The company is riding on this phone to be a success. Will it?

I can pretty much pick any phone I want that runs on Verizon - LG 2, Galaxy Note 3, etc but I chose the HTC One. I chose the HTC One for it's incredible build quality and overall compromises on features. Is it the fastest? Does it have the best camera? Does it have the largest screen? The answer to those questions are no.The Samsung Galaxy Nexus left a very bad taste in my mouth (due to Verizon and Google's handling of the updates and poor battery life) that my main concern was battery life and overall usability. Stock Android isn't a big draw to me any more (aka Nexus 5 and stock Android) and HTC Sense 6.0 doesn't offend me much. And I'm still stuck with Verizon (due to work) so this was my best option.

I'm going to be playing with this phone for a while and report back with my findings. But for now, here is a first review.

Spec wise, you can read about it all over the Internet as this is a fairly recent new flag-ship phone from HTC. Quad-Core SnapDragon 801 processor, 2GB RAM, 32GB Storage, 5" 1080p LCD display, yada-yada. This is my personal review from a dual OS, multi-platform agnostic user. Since I'm a dual OS handset kind of guy, the Android vs iOS debates are pretty silly.

Android Wear and the Moto 360

Google recently announced their new wearable platform, Android Wear. They will concentrate on watches first. The platform is suppose to extend the reaches of the Android eco-system to wearable gadgets.

One of the first announced piece comes from Motorola in the form of the moto 360.

And apparently, it is frothing with enthusiasm on the Internet. Really? Elegant? Classy? Yep, those are the remarks I've been reading. Really? The watch looks like cheap Movado, Citizen, mall watch knock-off. And another comment, why does the guy in the coffee shop (pictured above) needs a cappucino AND an expresso? I get it, they want you to think he is some cool,hip dude with a cool, hip watch in a cool, hip coffee shop.

I have pretty high standards when it comes to wristwatches as many people know, I collect them. But this moto 360 is really ugly. It is the kind of watch you see on lay-away at the local mall.

I don't know enough about Android wear to even speculate but in terms of wrist-watches, I'll definitely stick to my mechanical Swiss made Chronometers. It must be my age but I don't see the appeal in these items as they're disposable. Unlike an IWC or Breguet, these aren't the type of heirlooms you want to pass down another generation. Unlike a Rolex Sea-Dweller, Omega Planet Ocean, Blancpain 50 Fathom, or Panerai Luminor, these aren't the type of watches you want to take rock climbing or snorkeling. I like patina on my watches. I wear my Omega Seamaster Professional SM300 to fix the car, rigorous housework, or anything dangerous. So what if my $2,000 beater diver's watch gets scratched up. It gives it a natural aging patina. Electronic gadgets? They look like crap when they're all scratched up. Battery life? Who knows. All I know is when I am on vacation, I don't even want to think about an electrical wall outlet. Which reminds me of my youth; backpacking abroad. I remember having nothing but my Rolex GMT Master II in Bali for a week. I never had to plug it in every night. Never took it off to do any physical activity. I can't imagine the same thing with one of these electronic watches that need daily recharging.

It must be the sign of the times or I am getting old.This is an area I won't even get into.

Links:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/sharing-whats-up-our-sleeve-android.html

http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/18/google-android-wear/

http://motorola-blog.blogspot.com/2014/03/moto-360-its-time.html

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Six months with the Samsung Chromebook

It has been close to six months since I got my Samsung Exynos (ARM) powered Chromebook.
I've been using quite a bit lately and have some time to reflect on using it.

The same criticism I had in the beginning still hold true. The device is still very limited in what you can do with it. However, it's strengths are the reason I still use it.

Google Chromecast short review

OK, so I broke down and bought a Google Chromecast. Early on, I figure I didn't have a need for it since all my TVs have some form of Netflix, Youtube playback. I also have an AppleTV for screen casting and iTunes movie playback. The Chromecast appeared to be redundant and un-necessary for my needs.

So why did I get one? Simple. They finally added PLEX support. Yep, the latest updates now support PLEX playback for PlexPass members which I happen to be. I figure I could cut my electricity usage even further. I was using a combination of HTPC, iPad, and GoogleTV to watch PLEX in my living room. With a HTPC, I was still burning un-necessary KwH of electricity leaving it on days and weeks at a time just for PLEX. I was also an inch away from picking up a refrurb ROKU unit for another room just for PLEX. However, the latest updates and recent holiday promos, I decided to just bite the bullet.

So how does it work. Brilliant. I configured everything from my iPhone, browsed PLEX on my iPhone and voila. PLEX via Chromecast. The whole process took less than 5 minutes.

Thats it.

Now, there are some issues. I can't seem to swap audio channels and have no way of knowing DTS or AC3 5.1 surround is enabled. There is no way to swap audio tracks. I figure there will be a future software update to fix this.

Right now, I'm pretty giddy.

Playing PLEX is pretty cool as you can go back on the app and pick up what you are watching and scrub (rewind/fast-forward) your position. With apps like youtube, once you initiate a playback, you can't control it if you end up doing something else.

Speaking of Youtube, the 1080p playback is flawless. I fired up some videos from my Macbook and was generally impressed. The only thing that bothered me was if I closed my browser or swap to my phone, there was no way to control the playback on the television.

Netflix from the phone worked pretty good as well. However, I can't seem to find a way to enable stuff like subtitles yet.

Screen Tab/sharing is pretty lame compared to Apple Airplay. The quality was generally to low and frame rates too slow for me to bother with. Apple's Airplay is brilliant, period.

Overall, I am impressed. Sure, it is a limited device. If you already own an AppleTV, getting a Chromecast was pretty redundant until they recently added PLEX support. I know you can get PLEX on AppleTV with some DNS hacks but I didn't want to go there. So how does the AppleTV vs Chromecast compare? It is hard to say because both devices do different things. AppleTV can be a stand-alone device. The in-laws can operate it without problem. The Chromecast requires a device to control it. If I told my dad to play Netflix on the Chromecast, he will never figure it out. Plus, I use my AppleTV to listen to music quite a bit off my 20,000 plus iTunes library along with iTunes Match/Radio.

I also happen to have a bunch of other Android/Google TV devices that can do Chromecasting using apps (MiiPC, Logitech Revue, a few Android sticks) but $30 or so for a plug-n-play solution was a bit of a no brainer for me.

However, the Chromecast is cheap that I plan to get another one for the nursery. It is that good of a device and in this household, there is no need to take sides.

Friday, September 20, 2013

Chromecatch turns your Mac into a Chromecast receiver

There are lots of software/solutions that turns computers, NAS, and other devices into Airplay compatible end receivers. Now, there is one like that for Chrome "casting." It is called Chromecatch. It is a $3 app on the MacStore and there is an iOS version that turns your iPad into a chromecaster.

What does all this mean? The same functionality of the $35 HDMI Google Chromecast dongle can be replicated on a computer. $3 sure beats $35 if you want to experiment with this functionality.

The Cast icon shows up on Chrome devices if you are on the same network. I tried it with both computer, iOS, and Android devices. Unfortunately, Google half baked Chrome casting so it isn't available on the Samsung Chromebook.

Here is my Samsung 7" Galaxy Tab casting youtube to a Macbook Pro Retina. The Galaxy tablet is handing off the youtube to the Macbook.

It supports Google Play Music, Youtube and the SDK samples of Google Cast. I didn't try Netflix. I can't tell you how useful this except to say it can be done. Maybe I'll install it in my bedroom 27" iMac which is currently being unused. I still prefer Airplay any day of the week.

You can download and purchase it here. http://www.chromecatch.com/

Update: Apparently, you can do this for free with Leapcast. Maybe I'll install it on one of my Linux box with a follow-up.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Samsung Chromebook notebook review

Despite my misgivings, I broke down and got myself a Samsung Chromebook. Pictured above and stacked on top of my 15" Macbook Retina Pro, the Chromebook is tiny!

It is a basically a web browser using the internals of a mobile tablet in an 11" netbook form factor. I got it because I wanted to see if I could be cloud-only. Short answer, "hell no." However, the free 100GB of cloud storage for two years pretty much pays for the device. I also wanted to play with ARM running a polished desktop OS (yes, I consider Chrome OS a real OS albeit different). And lastly, it makes a good computer for the guest room.

Read my end user review for my impressions on this device.

Waiting for Chromebook refresh

Rumor has it that there will be a new, updated quad-core Exynos Samsung Chromebook announced at Google I/O in the next few weeks.

I've been really tempted to get the current one for tinkering. Why? Why not. I am not interesting in cheap x86 netbooks you can get for the same price. Sure, a few of you can point to some nice 11.6 ASUS touchscreen ones for a few bucks more. Moreover, I already have enough laptops lying around. What interests me is the ARM architecture; running anything but INTEL. I really just want a super light-weight, portable, long battery device to do some MySQL work locally. I'm currently using an iPad w/ keyboard SSH remotely. It works but I prefer to run something locally.

I don't know if I could deal with just Chrome OS. I've been playing with it under VM and I can't see myself using it full time even with developer mode and cruoton. I've also been paying attention to the latest Linux kernel support and running Linux on those books in general. Things are progressing to a point where full-time ARM linux desktop is viable.

Lets see! I may pop for one in the next few weeks. If the new one is compelling, I may get it. If not, I', heading over Best Buy to get the current one open-box at discount. They get a high return rate so there are plenty of open-box returns at great prices.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Chromebook Pixel or a Macbook Pro

The introduction of the Chromebook Pixel sure raised some eyebrows. I guess I'll pile on some of my own criticism.

For $1300 to $1450, you get yourself a nice laptop with a high res 2560x1700 resolution 3:2 touchscreen with a dual core ULV i5 CPU, 4GB of RAM, 32 to 64GB SSD and dual USB 2.0 ports. You get all of that for a starting price of $1300 in the year 2013. They also throw in 1TB cloud storage for 3 years.

I'm pretty sure the hardware is pretty dope but I rather spend the extra money for USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, a faster i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM and expandable SSD storage up to 256GB on the 13" Retina Macbook Pro. In fact, you can get an Apple refurb for $1260. Some retailers are selling new ones for a hair over $1300 with Applecare. They are that close. Worst case scenario, you spend $200 more at full retail for a Retina Macbook Pro.

So, the ChromeOS fanboys will tell you it is all about the OS. OK, I can accept that.

But think about this for a second, you can get yourself a Class 10 MicroSDHC card and install Chrome OS yourself on a macbook. I prefer the microSD route because it is flushed and cleaner.
32GB and 64GB UH-S1 Class 10 cards are pretty cheap. 32GB for $20. If you are a good shopper, you may be able to pick up a 64GB for $40.

Then you get yourself a $30 nifty mini drive or even a cheaper 3rd party knock off mini drive flushed card reader.

Then you install Hexxah's Chromium OS by going to http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/.
Install on a Macbook which will allow sdcard booting into Chrome OS.

Then voila, you have yourself an Aluminum Chromebook with USB 3.0, the nice Thunderbolt ports, up to 256GB of SSD. You can 5-6 way boot off a Mac running: OSX Mountain Lion, Windows 8, any Linux Distro, Open Indiana (Solaris), FreeBSD, and ChromeOS in the sdcard slot. Do you still feel limited by even a 128/256 GB SSD? Thunderbolt booting is extremely fast on Macs. They are just as fast as native SATA III internal drives as I've shown on my blog a few times. Have your "web browser" OS build on the default drive and come home or to the office with a bootable workstation build from a Thunderbolt RAID array.

So is that touchscreen really worth the premium? Considering that you can't pinch-n-zoom in the browser and there are very few multitouch gestures, Chrome OS is not touched optimized.

If you value the touch screen so much, the Chromebook Pixel makes the Microsoft Surface Pro a killer bargain at $999 ($1120 with keyboard).

Now, that 2560x1700 is pretty amazing. It trumps the Retina 13" 2560x1600. Well, not so fast. According to CNET reports, they both do pixel doubling but unlike the Macbook, the ChromeBook won't allow you to uprez. The Chromebook is unscaleable with a perceived pixel doubled 1,280x850 resolution. Text will be sharper like it is on the iPad 3/4. However, UI elements and everything else is pixel doubled.

The Macbook 13 is also pixel doubled at 1440X900. The Macbook will still give you more visible desktop view if you compared side to side. 1440x900 will show more elements than a 1280x850 desktop. This includes running two browser side-by-side or doing things like Firebug. On the Mac, there are sliding scale-able options for more desktop resolution up to 1980x1200. However, there is one important thing that seperates the Retina Macbook from the Chromebook Pixel. You can unlock the full resolution using various utilities or the command line terminal. You can unlock the full 2560x1600 on the 13 or 2880x1800 on the 15" to get what people call "true retina." True retina is native 100 % dpi with no pixel doubling. See the photo below.

Sure, there are reports of Chromebook booting into Linux Mint and Ubuntu. Booting into another Linux distro is probably the only way to unlock the full resolution. Those blog posts forget to emphasize the fact drivers have just been submitted to the Linux kernel and as of this writing, you won't get touch screen, nor trackpad, nor HiDPi with any Linux distro on the chromebook. You'll be hanging an external mouse off that Pixel. You will also have to hit CTRL-D a few times at boot since the boot process isn't that smooth and you only have 32 to 64 GB to play with.

Can someone tell me the $1300 value of the Chromebook Pixel? I'm always open to new computing paradigms. The $200-$250 Amazon best seller Chromebooks from Acer and Samsung make sense. There is nothing in that price bracket that is competitive at $200. This is the reason why they sell well at the low-end. They're disposable! At $1300, we have a lot of options over a Pixel. And $1300 is not disposable.

If this device had 8 to 16GB of RAM with expandable SSD storage, I would consider it despite the lack of I/O compared to an Apple product.

So who are these Cloud "power users" I read about? Apparently they are the intended market for this device.

Friday, November 2, 2012

HTML Text Editors for Android Tablets

My last post on iPad apps got a good reception so I will follow up with a review on some Android "tablet" text/code editors. These editors are designed for writing code with syntax highlighting and more advance features than a simple notepad editor.
Some of these apps have code preview, FTP, and even SFTP integration.

The apps I will mention in this post are:
Touchqode , DroidEdit Pro , AndEdit HD , WebMaster's HTML Editor, Android Web Editor PRO , SilverEdit , and kEdit.

Rather than bore you with in-depth review on each and every app, I will highlight what I think in terms of good features and shortcomings.

I chose these apps due to their popularity and the touted "tablet" compatibilities. You don't need to use a tablet specific apps. In fact, there are some good phone apps that work.
However, I am believer in optimized interfaces.If you use a tablet,the experience should be more compelling than a blown-up phone app. Unfortunately, a majority of these apps are just that - blown up phone apps.
Well, you can also use phone apps and they may work for you. Phone Apps include Jota Text Editor , TextWarrior , 920 Text Editor and I will briefly mention them as well.

First of all, before anyone attempts to do any text editing on Android, they need to use Hacker's Keyboard. If you have been using Android for any serious work, Hacker's keyboard needs no introduction but it is pretty much essential for control,tab, and escape which are not found in stock Android keyboards.

If I had to choose any apps out of this entire lot, it would be DroidEdit Pro or Touchqode. Both are highly rated and popular. Both have the important requirement of SFTP integration. That is a pre-requisite for me. There is no point in editing a server-side script locally off a SDcard or internal storage.

If I had to end this review, these are the two apps you only should look at.
I would give a slight preference over DroidEdit due to user interface. Touchqode feels too much like a blown up phone app in my opinion.

DroidEdit Pro Screenshots

Unfortunately, DroidEdit Pro suffers from many Android quirks in responsive layout. I had to switch orientations for many of the feature-sets because you would have over-lapping UI. I'll cover more of these "Android quirks" later.

Touchqode screenshots. As you can see, it still looks like a blown up phone app. Those buttons are extremely small. The app works fine on my phone but looks out of place on a larger screen.

Next, The only app that has a tablet feel is AndEdit. It supports a dual pane interface and you would easily mistaken it as a clone of an iPad app such as Texstastic. Unfortunately, that is all it has. It is rather buggy. Syntax highlighting is poor and there is no FTP/SFTP. Furthermore, it has no option of full screen text editing. The dual pane view is only good for selecting among files. It tries to be a clone of some iOS apps and ends up becoming an also-ran app.

AndEdit screenshots:

Bugs like these are annoying. Frozen panes and the apps tell you there are no open files. This happens after you try re-opening after a crash.

WebMaster's HTML Editor,SilverEdit, kEdit, and Android Web Editor Pro were pretty much lackluster. They felt like text editors with minor features like line numbering and additional buttons for brackets and curly braces.

WebMaster's HTML Editor

kEdit. In addition to the lack of SFTP, the poor syntax highlighting made this program irrelevant for me.

SilverEdit made me scratch my heads a few times. The UI doesn't work too well on a tablet.

I didn't feel like Android Editor Pro added any value vis-a-vis the competition. And look at that UI!

In fact, I prefer the free phone apps such as Jota, TextWarrior, 920 Text Editor. Unfortunately, they also lack FTP/SFTP integration which rules out their utility.

Still, I would keep at least one text editor on hand. I figure I could use some other apps to get my files but that is rather clumsy and requires clicking in and out of apps.

920 Text Editor

TextWarrior

Jota

In general, these apps suffer from Android quirks. Yes, I call them quirks. These apps are designed with "responsive layout." Meaning the UIs are designed for multiple resolution and are highly adaptive
( http://developer.android.com/training/multiscreen/adaptui.html ).
Developers need to take lesson from these guys on Design principles and guidelines for Android apps (http://mobile.smashingmagazine.com/2012/07/26/android-design-tips).

The problem with the stale responsive approach is you get a lot of wasted space. Incredibly small interface elements on high DPI tablets. Buttons tend to be small. List menus require a toothpick or stylus to click. For example in SilverEdit, I had a hard time clicking on files in the file manager. I would mistakenly open up an excel file instead of a javascript file in my Downloads folder. This would trigger a crash every time.

Then you have mismatch elements. Keyboards covering up menus. For example, trying to do a search-n-replace in DroidEdit is a frustrating exercise. I would end up switching orientation from landscape to portrait to reveal the "Find menu." In fact, in numerous instances, I had to switch orientation for various reasons. The ridiculously large virtual keyboards (I've tried many different keyboards) would take up a lot of wasted space that I would often end up going portrait.

To fix the problem above, you need to flip the tablet to portrait mode which is counter intuitive when you use a bluetooh keyboard in a case or dock.

First, none of these apps support version control (I haven't found one on iOS either). But the important thing is none of them support organization by projects. If you are connecting and downloading from various SFTP servers, you can easily get lost on which files belong to which server. In my testing, I was simply downloading various source code and it got confusing to which files belong to what source. Since many of these apps are "blown-up" phone apps, none of them offered a dual-column file manager that would allow you to organize your downloads. A better option is the ability to clone a folder from a remote website locally. Hence, you would probably end up using another FTP/SFTP client to organize your files. In the end, it is a bit counter-intuitive and gives a user a cumbersome experience. However, if you are only editing off one server (say a personal website), then an application like DroidEdit Pro would work.

I would also caution that you should always check to see if you are working locally or remotely. Some of these apps open up remotely and save remotely at the same time. If you lose a data connection or something happens, you can accidently delete a live file. Hence, I prefer some sort of cloning/downloading to a staging area. You can always "save-as" to a local folder but the UIs in many of these apps are not that informative or intuitive to tell you. Never hit the "save" button and always use the "save-as."

Fortysomething Geek