Category: google

Posted on

Google Play, Fun, Games and Pirates

The Pirates

One of the benefits of buying the Google Nexus Seven was getting £15 worth of credit for the Google Play store. The reason behind this was simple, from Google’s perspective, in getting you use to buying stuff from Google Play, so in future after exhausting the credit you’ll buy more.

I wanted to get a good idea of how everything worked… however here in the UK we get nowhere near the quality and quantity of stuff you can get in the US. So it was actually quite hard to find things. True apps were easy and I had already bought apps for my Nexus One phone, so the majority of these could be installed on the Nexus Seven without buying them again. One app I did install was Doubletwist which as well as allowing me to very easily copy music over to the Nexus Seven from iTunes on my Mac, can also stream video using AirPlay to my AppleTV. After installing I did test it out and I was pleased with how it worked. I used a clip that I had recorded using EyeTV and encoded for the iPhone as it happens. No it wasn’t 1080p HD, but the video quality was certainly acceptable and the wireless streaming worked well.

I did buy a book to try out the reading experience and was quite pleased. It was a similar experience to reading on the iPad, but the size of the device, been lighter than the iPad, made the reading experience easier, whilst the bigger screen made it a much nicer experience than reading on a phone. Of course, unlike Kindle books, it wasn’t possible to move around devices as you can with Kindle apps and devices.

I also wanted to try video from Google Play, alas you can’t buy films, only rent them (and no television programmes). I really can’t see Google Play replacing iTunes for me, as it doesn’t have the content that you can get on iTunes. Having decided to rent a film, I made the decision to rent Pirates from Aardman.

The Pirates

Having initially clicked “buy” on the Nexus Seven I could have started watching straight away… knowing the (poor) speed of my ADSL connection I decided not to. You could download your rental, so decided that would be more sensible than streaming. I set the Nexus Seven to download overnight and when I checked the next morning it was all fine.

With renting, you have 30 days to watch the film, and once you start watching you just have just two days to watch it. So though I was tempted to have a glimpse to see video quality I knew if I did that I would probably never to get to see the rest of the film.

When we got round to watching it, I spent a fair bit of time working out how to stream the film from the Nexus Seven, via AirPlay through the AppleTV to my TV. Hmmm though it is possible to do this with video you put on the device, alas DoubleTwist does not allow you to stream videos protected by Google Play DRM. There is no HDMI out, or any other video out for the Nexus Seven, making it nigh on impossible to view the video on a screen other than the Nexus Seven screen. In the end we watched Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs on Netflix instead straight from the AppleTV.

Not wanting to try and all crowd round the 7” screen of the Nexus Seven I tried to think of a solution. In the end it was quite easy. I went to Google Play on Chrome on my MacBook Retina which has an HDMI slot, connected it to the TV direct. Initially I wasn’t allowed to stream as I had downloaded it on the Nexus Seven… I found if I removed that downloaded file from the Nexus Seven then Google Play would stream from Chrome on the laptop.

Doing this allowed me to change the resolution to 480p. I was initially worried that my slow ADSL connection would cause buffering issues, however in the end we didn’t have single buffering problem.

Doing this allowed me to change the resolution to 480p. I was initially worried that my slow ADSL connection would cause buffering issues, however in the end we didn’t have single buffering problem.

I was impressed with the quality of the video, it looked great on my 40” TV. My only disappointment was that I was forced away from the Nexus Seven to watch it and use another device. As a personal device, the Nexus Seven is great for watching video, but if everyone in the family wants to watch the video then unlike the iPad the Nexus Seven didn’t work for us.

Posted on

It’s quite good really…

Let’s get a few things straight, though I may have a reputation for been something of an Apple fanboy, the reality is somewhat different.

Yes I have the iPad, yes I use an iPhone, true the MacBook Air does spend a lot of time with me when I am out and about, also true that the iMac at home (and the one in the office) are well used. You might think that I am an Apple fanboy and I only buy Apple?

The truth is more complicated. I like products for what they do and how they make my life easier, better, quicker and more efficient. Over the last few years the end result has been that I have been buying more and more stuff from Apple.

When the iPhone first came out in 2007, I didn’t like it, no real apps, no decent camera and importantly for me no 3G. At that time I was using the Nokia N95 which was, though somewhat chunky, was a great phone with a decent camera. With wifi and 3G I could use it as a portable wireless hotspot. Though with the iPhone 4 that became a possibility, the reality today is that I use my Google Nexus One for tethering over the iPhone. It is more reliable, it keeps the connection live and the impact on battery life is minimal – that was the one downside of using Joikuspot on the N95 it killed the battery life.

I do like the Apple laptops, but before getting a G4 PowerBook I was sold on Sony laptops, especially the compact ones. These, with their extended batteries, lasted all day and were small and light. I think it was Windows Vista which really moved over to OS X in the end. The constant updating and permissions issues made using Windows such a drag that using OS X was always like a breath of fresh air.

Even today, having used an Airport Extreme as my main home network router, having gone back to Netgear as I have reverted back to ADSL from FTTC I have found that the routing side is less than perfect and I have had a few network issues. True not all my Apple networking stuff has worked all the time.

So going back to the blog post title, “It’s quite good really…” am I talking about a new Apple device, no it’s the Google Nexus 7. I’ve had it two days so far and I am really impressed.

Google Nexus 7

For a tablet that costs just £159 it has the responsiveness and speed that I would expect from a tablet costing two or three times as much. Google have put a lot of work into it and the new Jelly Bean Android OS to give the end user a great experience. It is that great experience which counts as I am sure that is the reason that the iPad has cornered the tablet market even though it has its limitations. I am in the process of writing a full review of my experiences so that will come later. The Nexus 7 does have some limitations and issues, but overall I am really pleased with it and liking it a lot. It’s quite good really…

Posted on

Chroming the iPad

I actually quite like Safari on the iPad, but was intrigued by what the new Google Chrome App had to offer.

I generally use Chrome more than Safari when using my desktop Mac, but until now there wasn’t that choice on the iPad.

After installing Chrome and starting the app you have the option of signing in with your Google account.

Google Chrome Browser

This to be honest is the only real reason for using Google Chrome so that you can sync with your desktop browser.

Trying out some of my usual sites I found it worked fine.

eLearning Stuff on the Google Chrome Browser for iPad

Of course there is no Flash support, but a lot more sites realise that and are offering their content in alternative formats. A lot more of the video on BBC News for example now works on the iPad, regardless whether you use Chrome or Safari.

BBC News on the Chrome browser for iPad

Despite the fact that this is Google Chrome, it relies on the Safari WebKit as a result the performance is similar to mobile Safari. As a result I was disappointed when I tried Google+ on Chrome. I got the same “mobile” browser default that I do on Safari. I prefer the desktop browser version of Google+ over the Google+ App and really don’t like the mobile browser version of Google+.

Google+ on Google Chrome for iPad

If you really do like Chrome, alas you can’t using iOS change the default browser, clicking links in Twitter apps or Mail will result in Safari opening.

On the desktop I use multiple browsers, so for me it makes sense to have a similar capability on the iPad. So far I like the synchronisation with the desktop version of Chrome and I think that will be the key reason I will use it.

Get Chrome in the iTunes App Store.

Posted on

Music, books, movies and tan slacks

After announcing their new 7″ Google Nexus 7 tablet at the Google I/O conference keynote, Google released a video talking about the device and the benefits it provides users. After clicking play, make sure you turn on closed captions by clicking the “cc” button.

It was pointed out to me that Google have used automatic closed captions on their video and let’s just say the transciption of speech to text was not perfect, and in some ways quite amusing.

biggest release of the interrupt resistance so far

we could enjoy under the microscope an injury for palm

smear making

music, books, movies and tan slacks

high-resolution speaking

toad just invites house members

inexperienced antiquity link that excites

looking forward to deceive my friends tell me about their next seven caplets

Thank you to Ron Mitchell for pointing this out to me.

Posted on

Taking a Google Drive

Google has finally and eventually come through with their cloud storage offering.

Google Drive gives you 5GB of storage and there are apps that allow you to sync your Google Drive with a computer. Having installed the Google Drive on my iMac at home, it appeared to work just like Dropbox.

So will I be changing to Google Drive?

Probably not, in the main as there isn’t an iOS App for Google Drive. There is also, as is to be expected very little support for Google Drive from third party apps as there is for Dropbox. I suspect over time we will see increased support for Google Drive in third party apps, but not sure though. Think how little support there is for Google+ as Google have not yet released the APIs that allow that to happen with Google+, will there be a similar model with Google Drive, or will be made open enough for developers to embed Google Drive into their applications.

At this point I have installed the “drive” and will be using it for some stuff.

My main concern with Google Drive is that it may force Facebook to buy Dropbox…. Now that would really be a disaster!

Posted on

Google Plus One

So what do I think of Google+ then?

Well unlike other Google beta products it was quite easy to get an invite and once I was in, it was easy to create as Google call them circles of friends.

I don’t really use my Google Mail account for email so as a result in the past when approaching services such as Buzz and Wave I found I couldn’t connect with many people. As a result there wasn’t the network effect. I think part of the reason that Buzz and Wave didn’t take off was that most people I know don’t often mix social networking with email communication. So will the same happen with Google+?

Possibly!

Once I had created some circles I had some conversations and tried the features that you find in it. It reminds me of both Jaiku and Friendfeed but with all the style of Google. I do wonder why Google design their services in the way that they do. They must employ designers and UI specialists, however I just find myself finding the design very functional. The actual core function of Google+ though is working for me and I have noticed I am spending more time with Google+ than I am with Google.

The good news is that an iPhone App for Google+ is already with Apple and pending approval it should really improve the mobile experience on iOS. I’ve not had a chance to try it out on my Android phone, but from what others are saying it works really quite well.

Still some way to go for the service to go and as with any service it’s less the functionality and much more the network of people that will determine if this will be successful or not. If my colleagues and friends use the service than I will, if they don’t I won’t. Yes I know that is a chicken and egg scenario, but that is just the way it is.