Nexus 7 - The Best Android Device Available

Let me just start out by saying that the Nexus 7 is unquestionably the best Android device available today! It's lightning fast, noticeably faster than any mobile device I've used...and I've used a bunch of them.  I don't know if it's due to the quad-core processor or the smoothness of the Jelly Bean OS...probably a combination of both.  Applications download/install several times faster than on other devices, and when you go into 3D mode on Google Maps it's absolutely amazing how quickly all the building structures take shape.  I bought the device intending to hand it to one of our developers in order to test our Android app, but I've held onto to it for over a week now and I'm not sure I'm going to relinquish it...sorry David!

There are a number of other reasons to like the Nexus 7.  The build quality is excellent, as is the screen resolution.  For lots of people the form factor of a 7-inch device is advantageous to the 10-inch iPad because of portability.  One of the nice things about its size is that I can store the device in the glove compartment or in the center console of my car, something I absolutely can't do with the iPad.  The smaller/lighter form factor will also be preferred by a lot of people who read books, though I suspect magazine readers may not think the same.  If you rely heavily on Gmail, Maps and other Google apps like I do then there is no comparison between the way they run on the Nexus vs. the iPad...the latter seems stuck in the stone ages.  Battery life is also outstanding, on par or maybe slightly better than the iPad.  And perhaps its biggest advantage is the price...at $199 it's priced the same as the mediocre Kindle Fire and and blows it away in just about every respect.  And that price is less than half the cost of the entry-level iPad.

Quite a bit has been written recently about Android 4.1, aka Jelly Bean, particularly the sheer speed and smoothness of the OS.  In addition to that Google is really trying to play up its Play Store (no pun intended) as well as the integration with all of its cloud-based services.  For example, after going through the setup process my homepage shows a collage of content I have stored in Google:

Perhaps the coolest Jelly Bean feature is Google Now, which is best described as an intelligent extension to the notification system.  Google Now will automatically display "cards" based on some of your common activities.  For example, I checked the score for a recent Giants game on the device, and ever since then it's been display cards for each of the Giants games, keeping me up to date on the scores.  Ditto for the weather.  And it even goes beyond that, bordering on creepy.  The other day I was reading an article on TechCrunch written by a guest author who is employed by one of the local VC's.  After finishing the article I decided to hop onto the VC's website to check out the author's bio...this was done on my laptop.  A few minutes later I picked up the Nexus and noticed that a new notification had popped up...it was driving directions and estimated drive time from my home to the VC's office.  As I stated...a bit creepy, but useful nonetheless.

So the big question is...will I replace my trusty iPad with the Nexus 7?  It's a really, really close call...but probably not.  I do like the convenience of having 4G connectivity when I need it, and unfortunately the Nexus only supports wifi.  And though I love the whole concept behind Google Now, I also think that the technology is something I'd rather have on my smartphone than on my tablet device...now, if Verizon can get off their butts and deliver Jelly Bean to my Galaxy Nexus I'd be set!   I also think the iPad still gets the nod as the superior reading device, especially for reading magazines/newspapers in landscape mode.  In fact, some of the Android reading apps don't even support landscape mode on the Nexus, probably due to the fact that at 7 inches the screen isn't conducive to a quality reading experience in landscape.  But at $199, it's easily the best value out there and is worth serious consideration for anyone needing to buy a tablet...regardless of the price point.

Verizon and the Galaxy Nexus - Two Worthwhile Upgrades

Being the Android fanboy that I am, I had my eyes on the latest "pure Android" device, the Galaxy Nexus, ever since it was launched a few months ago.   The device comes pre-loaded with the latest and greatest Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) version of Android, with lots of new bells and whistles and a much improved user interface.   But alas, it was only available on Verizon and I had been a dedicated (and mostly satisfied) T-Mobile customer for the past 7 years.  In addition to that I felt that this trend towards larger and larger handset screens was not to my liking, and so when I saw that the Galaxy Nexus was sporting a 4.65-inch screen I figured I really didn't want to deal with anything that bulky.  So, given these two issues I decided I would just stand pat for awhile and see how things were going to play out.  And as it turned out, Google did start rolling out ICS to existing Nexus S users such as myself, and since the Nexus S is no slouch of a device I figured I would just hold onto it for awhile and wait for the ICS update.  And sure enough, back in December I was able to download and install ICS without a hitch, so I thought I was golden.

Well, I quickly found out that ICS on the Nexus S had a couple of major issues, notably excessive battery drain and a general sluggishness with most applications.  In fact, shortly after Google started deploying ICS to Nexus S owners they abruptly halted the deployment, probably because everyone was having similar problems to mine.  It was around this time that I also started losing my patience with T-Mobile, as there were just too many places I was going that had little to no reception, and even in the places where there was reception it was often the case that all I could get was 2G....WTF, that just doesn't cut it in today's world.

I waited and waited for Google to address the ICS issues, but no dice.  And then I heard about this great deal that Amazon had for the Galaxy Nexus, just $99!  So, I immediately jumped on the deal, had my phone in a couple of days (with number ported) and I was in business.  And boy, I can't believe I didn't switch to Verizon sooner.  I'm getting spectacular 4G coverage in most places....check out this speedtest report which I ran near my office:

ICS on the Galaxy Nexus doesn't seem to have any of the battery issues I experienced with the Nexus S either.  I consider myself to be a pretty heavy smartphone user, but despite that I am able to go nearly a full day with the device off of a single charge; noticeably better than my Nexus S even before the ICS upgrade.  And the dual-core processor in the Galaxy is so damn fast....it's night and day compared to any other phone I've used in terms of the speediness of apps.  This, along with Verizon's great coverage and speedy 4G network have me in smartphone heaven at the moment.  Do I still think the phone is too big?  Yeah, it would be perfect if the screen was closer to 4-inches even...but I'll overlook this given all of the phone's other advantages.

Oh, but now it's time to play with my new "retina display" iPad...so stay tuned!

My Ice Cream Sandwich is Quickly Melting

You know you're a tech/gadget geek when you decide to perform a major OS upgrade while on vacation...and in Sin City of all places.  But that's exactly what I did while I was in Vegas week before last.  I caught wind of the fact that the latest version of Android, 4.0 (aka "Ice Cream Sandwich") was slowly being released over-the-air for the Nexus S.  Of course, being my impatient self I couldn't wait for that and instead found a download link off of Google's servers and manually upgraded myself.  In typical Android fashion the upgrade process was very straightforward and in less than an hour I was up and running with the latest and greatest from Google.  So how's my Ice Cream Sandwich experience been since then?

Well, let me start out by saying that if you are current Nexus S owner and have not yet upgraded....please don't!  Google pulled the plug on the upgrade shortly after it was released due to a number of issues that were reported by early adopters.  In some cases the upgrade never completed and essentially bricked the phone, in other cases certain functions stopped working post upgrade (e.g. WiFi), and in a lot of cases, myself included, battery consumption has simply been atrocious since the upgrade.  Right now I'm lucky to get half a day of normal use out of my battery before it dies.  Some people say that turning off WiFi or disabling the Google+ app helps, but I've done both and it doesn't seem to matter.  I'm crossing my fingers that Google does something about this soon, and it's been such a royal pain in the ass that I'm even thinking of switching to Verizon and buying a Galaxy Nexus just so that I don't have to deal with it anymore.  And in addition to the power issue there are a couple of other major annoyances with ICS. Text rendering in Gmail and the browser seem to take forever sometimes, and some of my apps just appear to be more sluggish in general.

But despite all these issues there are some really nice enhancements with ICS.  The Gmail app is a lot more refined and intuitive, and some of the more commonly used functions (e.g. labels, mark as unread) have dedicated icons now instead of your having to pull up the options menu.  The notifications pulldown has also been enhanced to allow you to remove individual notifications by swiping them to the left.  This new swiping gesture has been applied to a number of other places within ICS as well.  Within Gmail you can swipe to go to the next/previous message, and within the "running apps" list you can kill specific apps by swiping them away - very nice.  There's also a really cool new feature which allows you to send one of five preconfigured (and customizable) text messages to a caller during an incoming call when you can't pick up the phone.   Ice Cream sandwich also seems to have addressed a couple of major issues that I often encountered with the Gingerbread OS.  Sometimes when I press on the "home" button it would take at least 15 seconds for the icons to appear, and even worse, sometimes the home screen itself would become totally unresponsive and I would have to power cycle the device to fix it.  Fortunately ICS addressed both of these issues.

Please Google, fix the damn battery issue and allow me to enjoy my Ice Cream Sandwich.

Amazon Cloud Player vs. Google Music Beta

Last week Apple gave us a previous of iCloud and iOS 5 at its annual WWDC conference. What they showed was pretty impressive, but most of it is still beta and won't be generally available until the Fall.  Of particular interest to me are their plans around moving iTunes to the cloud and finally relieving us of the painful and outdated method of cabled sync in order to move content to mobile devices.  But if you're like me you don't live in a world where Steve Jobs has complete control over your mobile existence, there are a couple of Android-based alternatives available right now that you might want to look at;  Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music Beta.

Amazon Cloud Player has been around for the past two months or so, and I've been using it off and on since then with generally good success.  They give everyone 5GB of storage for free, but as I mentioned in a prior blog post you can get an upgrade to 20GB by purchasing any album, including a bunch for just 99 cents.  Google Music Beta came out shortly after Amazon and gives you storage for up to 20,000 songs; plenty more than most people will require. I finally received an invite to the beta a couple of weeks ago and so I installed it right away and had a chance to compare it with Amazon.  Here's how the two offerings compare:

Installation: Both products download and install very easily, and both use a Flash-based component for scanning music on your local machine and uploading it to the cloud.  But they greatly differ in their approaches to this.  The Amazon uploader must be manually initiated, and once it kicks off it spends a few minutes analyzing your iTunes library, compares it to what's already been stored in the cloud, and then presents you a screen where you can either automatically upload all the music it finds that's not already in the cloud or selectively upload the playlists, albums, artists, etc. that you'd like to be synced.  It also provides a comprehensive report of content that it finds that it is unable to sync, e.g. DRM'd content.  By contrast, Google's default mode is to always run in the background and automatically upload new iTunes music to the cloud, without the user having to take action.  In theory this seems like a better and more elegant solution.  However, in my case the Google software consumed nearly all of the CPU on my machine while scanning/uploading my iTunes content, and to add to my frustration the upload process itself took an incredibly long time - roughly a couple of days to upload just 3500 songs.  In fact, the CPU consumption was so bad that I had to go into Task Manager and lower the priority of the Google music manager process.
Advantage: Amazon


Web Music Player: To be honest, I didn't spend much time using either player - after all, I've got iTunes running on my laptop!  But they both seemed to do the job, and Google's player has a few extra features such as thumbs up/thumbs down and keeping track of the play count.  But I do like the look of the Amazon player a little more, plus it has the advantage of being able to play music purchased from the Amazon MP3 store.
Advantage: Neither - it's a tie.


Mobile App: Both mobile apps did the job and generally worked well over Wi-Fi or when wireless coverage wasn't in issue.  But on several occasions the Google app would just stop midway through a song for no explainable reason.   I like the UI better on Amazon, and I like the fact that it lets you easily switch between music in the cloud vs. music sitting on your device.  Google lets you do this as well, but you have to go into one of the options settings in order to switch back and forth...a bit of a pain.   I've also used both applications during long bike rides that went through areas of spotty to low coverage, and I have to say that both applications had their share of issues when dealing with bad coverage and both frequently just stop working and never recover even when reception improves - maybe they should reverse engineer the Pandora app and figure out how they are so good at dealing with this. Google would also randomly skip both forwards and backwards within a song when experiencing reception issues...very strange.  Amazon performed a bit better, and I suspect it "reads ahead" within a playlist and stores upcoming songs within its local cache.  I'm sure Google does some of this too, but perhaps its cache is smaller.  One very annoying problem with Amazon is that it sometimes caches garbage for a song, and once it does then each time you play that song you'll hit that garbage and it just stops playing..at least until the cache is cleared.
Advantage: Amazon


iOS Support: Well, as you would expect neither offering has native iOS support, although both claim to be usable from Mobile Safari.  I was able to verify this myself using my iPad.
Advantage: Neither - it's a tie.


In summary, I have to give a slight edge to Amazon, although not by much.  And both companies need to spend time on their Android apps and improve their handling and recovery of reception issues.

Oh, and it looks like Spotify is close to launching here in the U.S....I can't wait.

My Favorite Cloud-Based Services

As part of my effort to move away from all things Microsoft and desktop software in general, I've been using a number of cloud-based services with regularity and am amazed at how far along they've come over the past year or two.  In fact, I find their convenience and ease-of-use so compelling that I rarely find myself creating new content locally on my hard drive anymore.  Plus, the fact that I can easily access these services from my PC, iPad or Android phone means that my data is always accessible no matter where I happen to be.  And best of all, these services are all free!  So...without further ado, here's a list of some of my favorites:

Google Docs
Not the newest kid on the block, but Google Docs has made numerous improvements since it was launched a few years ago and I can safely say now that I'll never create another Microsoft Office document again.  And if you're like me you only use about 10% of the functionality of MS Office anyway, so why keep all that bloatware on your PC?  Docs is also accessible from both iOS and Android devices, though editing capabilities are somewhat limited on those platforms.  And Google has made it pretty easy to share documents with specific individuals or across an entire workgroup; in fact, it's kind of cool working on a shared spreadsheet and being able to see other members of your team updating cells in real-time.  And for those of you who have shied away from Docs thinking that it just couldn't be powerful enough to replace MS Office, have a look at this presentation.


Evernote
I started to use Evernote when I decided to dump Outlook and needed another place to store all the little notes that I take - my grocery list, names of interesting restaurants I happen to spot, meeting notes, etc.  Evernote does all this and then some.  Among other things I can assign tags to my notes so that I can dynamically categorize them,  with the Evernote browser extension I can push one button to clip a webpage and save it off as a note, I can have my Evernote content displayed within Google search results, and I can create a note instantly using a photo I just shot on my smartphone.  The optional Evernote application is available on all the usual platforms, though on my PC I rarely use it because I find that their web interface to be more than sufficient.  But their iPad app is a must have, as it's simply a thing of beauty.

Dropbox
Why would anyone go through the hassle of setting up a shared public drive in their office when they could be using Dropbox instead?  Dropbox makes it dead simple to upload and store any type of file to its service, and optionally share files and/or folders with selected parties.  It even keeps track of older versions of files and allows you to review their revision history.  If you install the optional desktop application your Dropbox folder will even show up as a local PC or Mac folder, and you can operate against that folder just as you would with a file sitting on your hard drive.  You also receive desktop notifications whenever a shared file is updated, and your local copy is automatically synced with the cloud.  One word of caution, however...If you happen to be one of those unfortunate souls that must login to a Windows domain, then by default your local Dropbox folder will be created within your roaming profile.  To avoid any potential syncing issues when running in disconnected mode you should go into the Dropbox application settings and change the location of this folder to somewhere within your local hard drive.

LucidChart
I just started using LucidChart about a month ago and simply love it.  If you ever have the need to quickly create a diagram or flowchart but don't want to hassle with something like Visio, then this is for you.  Or, if you're like me and don't have an artistic bone in your body but occasionally need to produce a wire-frame in order to conceptualize an idea and share it with others then this is a must have.  LucidChart is a functional replacement for Visio, and its wire-framing and "demo" capabilities are indispensable during the earlier stages of web design.  And the entire application is written in HTML 5 and really showcases its power.  One of its coolest features is the ability to search though Google Images for something you're looking for, and then once you locate it you can just drag-and-drop that image straight into your diagram.

Amazon Cloud Drive
Available just within the past two weeks, Amazon Cloud Drive is what iTunes should aspire to be - a cloud-base service that allow you to stream and/or download your media content over the internet.  As you would expect from Amazon the service is very robust and the UI is excellent.  The optional Cloud Player app just takes a few short minutes to scan your entire iTunes library and creates a listing of all the artists, albums, playlists, etc. that can be uploaded to Cloud Drive.  And for the ones that cannot be uploaded (e.g. unsupported format, DRM-protected, etc.) it displays a list of those files along with the specific reason why.  Amazon gives everyone 5 GB of Cloud storage for free, and between now and the end of the year if you make just one MP3 purchase (I bought a 99-cent album) you'll get upgraded to 20 GB, enough for most people to store all of their music.  I've moved my entire music library onto it and couldn't be happier...I can access my playlists from anywhere now and not have to worry about syncing.  Unfortunately, for you iOS fanboys I'm afraid to say that currently you cannot access Cloud Drive content from an iPhone or iPad - perhaps you'll have to wait for Apple to get their act together and bring iTunes out of the stone ages in order to gain this capability.

Just Became a Gingerbread Man - My Nexus S Upgrade

I received an unexpected gift yesterday, the latest and greatest "pure Android" phone, the Google Nexus S and its interesting curved screen. When it was announced a few weeks back I wasn't sure if I was going to upgrade or not - I had planned to drop by a local Best Buy to check out a demo unit. But receiving a freebie certainly solved that dilemma for me...and boy, now that I've used it a bit I would have gladly paid for the upgrade myself.

Probably the biggest improvement is the overall speed of the device. My Nexus One was and still is no slouch in this regard, but the Nexus S puts it to shame in just about every way. I'm not sure if it's the upgraded hardware or the optimizations that were made in the latest Android version (Gingerbread) that made the big difference - probably a combination of both. But routine tasks such as web browsing and downloading/installing applications are much faster than ever before.

The other major improvement is the substantial increase in the amount of available "Internal Storage". The Nexus S ships with 16GB of flash memory and devotes a portion of that to "internal storage", which hold apps and app-related data; and the bulk of it to external "USB Storage" - this is in lieu of allowing for a user-replaceable SD card. Some people have griped about the lack of an SD slot, but 16GB is quite a bit of storage and so I don't think this is a very big deal. But what's really nice about this is that the amount of internal storage the Nexus S sets aside (~1GB) is so generous that I never have to worry about overloading my device with apps and running into the dreaded "low memory" errors. On the Nexus One I always tried to always stay above 20MB of free memory so that I didn't run into this problem, but after setting up the Nexus S and installing the exact same set of apps it showed me that I still had over 800MB of internal memory available. So now I can go on my merry way and start installing new apps with reckless abandon again!

Some of the other niceties on the Nexus S are:

• The Super AMOLED screen is not only gorgeous but actually usable in bright sunlight. This was one of my biggest gripes with the Nexus One's screen, especially when attempting to shoot daytime photos and videos.
• The call quality through the headset seems to be stellar, better than on the Nexus One.
• Real (vs. quasi) multi-touch capability allows me to take advantage of some of the newer apps such as the uber-cool Google Maps V5 with its 3D rendering.
• The new Gingerbread keyboard works better and is more user-friendly than the prior Froyo version, though probably still not in the same league as the iPhone 4.
• Built-in support for 3rd-part VoIP (SIP) providers - this is useful mostly for geeks like me, but now I don't have to install a separate SIP application when needing to do Wi-Fi calling while traveling overseas or if I'm in a bad reception area.
• Near Field Communication (NFC) support. This is the first device I'm aware of that supports NFC, so we'll wait and see how useful this will be over time.
• Oh, did I say the Nexus S is fast? :-)

Okay, now a few Nexus S downsides:

• The omission of an LED light and a trackball/trackpad - the latter is not a big deal to me since the only time I ever used the Nexus One's trackball was when I needed to position the cursor within a block of text - Gingerbread handles this pretty well now without that need for it. I do, however, miss not having the LED notification as it was a very useful way of letting me know when I received an email or text without having to turn on the screen.
• Because it uses a plastic vs. metal backing it doesn't feel quite as solid as the Nexus One, but I don't find this as bothersome as some of the other reviewers. Also, taking off the back cover in order to get to the battery or SIM card takes more work than on the Nexus One.
• Lack of 4G support - This is the major reason why I would not have purchased the phone on my own. Though 4G availability on T-Mobile is not yet widespread, it would have been nice to include this support in order to make the device more future-proof. On the other hand, 3G speeds are pretty good and noticeably faster than on the Nexus One, and I guess not having 4G saves me the $15/month that T-Mobile inexplicably dings their customers for using that service.

Overall I'm very happy with the device and will definitely hold onto it for awhile.

My Ever-Decreasing Dependence on Microsoft, aka My Growing Dependence on Community and Open Source

Ten years ago I was an IT executive at a Fortune 500 financial services company, and I had overall responsibility for all the desktop and server technology that ran our internal applications. At the time we were on the leading edge of Microsoft technologies, and had rolled out Windows NT-based desktops to the entire company along with hundreds of Windows servers that ran everything from our corporate email to our internal CRM application. I was a staunch proponent of Microsoft during this time, as not only were their solutions a lot cheaper to run than the alternatives at the time (mostly UNIX-based) but the tight integration between Windows-based apps and the relative simplicity of dealing with a single platform seemed to make a lot of sense to me. Plus, some of their apps were clearly the best at the time, e.g. Microsoft Exchange which arguably still provides the best email experience out there.

Fast forward now to present day. I am now the co-founder in a Web 2.0 startup with less than 40 employees, and like most startups we try to do as much as we can on the cheap. How much Microsoft technology am I using today? Well, I am still quite dependent on my Windows laptop which is now running the latest and greatest OS, Windows 7. And I do spend a great deal of time within the Microsoft Office suite, whether it's managing my calendar and email or working on slides for a presentation. But that's pretty much it. Our major IT expense outside of people costs are the hardware and datacenter fees associated with running our website, but outside of that our IT expenses are close to zero. Let's look at some of the details.

The Wigix website is run completely on open source, mainly the LAMP stack plus some Java that is required for our search engine, which is also based on open source. The corporate IT types may shudder at the thought of relying on the community for support instead of going with one of the big players (e.g. IBM, Oracle), but my experience has been that the community provides a level of support and interaction that often exceeds that of the big software companies. And from an installation, integration and ease-of-use standpoint open source tends to be far easier to deal with than their licensed software counterparts. We are not in the minority here, as nearly all startups are heavy users of open source technology. BTW, does anyone even care about IIS anymore?

Like all other companies we are quite dependent on email. While I would love nothing better than to have the rich experienced associated with Exchange, I find that the free mail service provided by Google Apps (based on Gmail) is more than sufficient for our use. In fact, in this day and age of "real-time" I believe most people place a higher priority on accessibility and ease-of-use over pure functionality. Google has been nothing short of masterful on this front. I still use Outlook in order to access my mail, because I never got used to the way Gmail threads its discussions. But my fondness for Outlook is diminishing over time as well...right now it is the one app that routinely seems to bog down my laptop. Some of my employees have been pleading with me to switch to Thunderbird or another open source solution. I may eventually do that, probably at the same time I ditch my Blackberry Curve and switch to the upcoming Google Phone.

Another good example is the web browser. Up until 2 years ago I used Internet Explorer exclusively, as I felt I needed all of its rich functionality, all of its toolbars and plug-ins, etc. But when Chrome came out I decided to give it a try, and I haven't looked back since. The speed and simplicity of the browser seemed to outweigh everything else, and I realized that I didn't even really miss all the add-ons and extensions of IE. In fact, in the time it just takes to launch IE 8 on my laptop I could bring up Chrome and already be browsing a few websites...seriously. And now that Chrome supports extensions and does so in an elegant manner that does not bog the system down there is simply no reason to ever go back.

Microsoft has a huge challenge in front of itself competing with free. For sure, they can feel secure for awhile that the Fortune 500 types will continue to provide a steady revenue stream for them, but for how long? Except for Windows itself and the Office suite I've completely removed my dependency on them, and I suspect it won't be too long before I no longer have a need for Office either. And I have to think that many others feel the same way that I do too. This is unfortunate, because despite my commentary I've always had much admiration for the company, its leadership and the innovative technology they've brought to the market over the years.