Edward Kiledjian

The Canadian wireless Telecommunications Association has been spearheading a 911 initiative to allow those with hearing or speech impairments to text 911 emergency response services. The trial, started in 2012, was such a success that CWTA members (all major carriers and their sub-brands) have been busy upgrading their networks to support the service nationwide.

On January 24 2014, the CWTA announced that its member carriers have completed the required upgrades but that the 911 control centres themselves haven't implemented the required technologies. 

“At this time, the T9-1-1 service is not available in any region of the country. The service will be implemented by 9-1-1 call centres in different municipalities or regions at different time periods over the next several years.”

Once the regional 911 control centres upgrade their equipment, carriers will be ready to act  act as an intermediary link between the affected user and the 911 emergency control centre. To use the service, a user will have to register with their carrier for it and have a compatible device. 

CWTA

British Sky Broadcasting Group won a court battle with Microsoft last year and the settlement included an undisclosed amount of compensation and Microsoft agreed to change the name of its infringing SkyDrive product.

Now Microsoft has announced that Skydrive will be rebranded to OneDrive (link). They are promising that OneDrive is everything Skydrive is and more. What the more means is anyone's guess and Skydrive hasn't been the most popular consumer online cloud storage service. 

No date of when the new service will go live but you can give them your email address and they will let you know.

Every operating system vendor dreams of being able to quickly upgrade its existing deployed users to its latest and greatest but in most cases, it take months to years. Apple is showing everyone how its done announcing that "80% of decides are using IOS 7". 17% are on IOS 6 and 3% are on some older version.

Stats from Apple (link)

We live in a society where people are overly demanding from retailers but everyone wants the best deal in town. Traditional brick and mortar retailers have responded by drastically reducing store staffing levels which means its though having your questions answered or issues resolved.

Many online retailers are able to offer competitive prices but do a really good job hiding their contact information. 

For the last several years, I have been huge fan of monoprice.com. They offer medium-to-high quality items at rock bottom prices. Like most of their customers, I started by buying ethernet and hdmi cables and slowly migrated to their other Monoprice branded items. Most recently I wanted a stereo bluetooth headphone that was cheap enough I could through in a bag all the time and use in less than ideal situations without worrying about breaking it. I bought the Monoprice bluetooth sport earphones (a review of those will be forthcoming).

I quickly experienced issues with the battery and contacted Monoprice support. Within hours, they confirmed a replacement was on its way. 2 weeks later, having not received the replacement, I contacted them again and they shipped another replacement (which I received). It was so refreshing to deal with a company that offered such amazing no hassle customer service. 

From a customer service perspective, I rank Monoprice as one of the best companies I have worked with in the last several years (up there with Amazon).

I have found that their products are typically well built and provide a very high quality-to-price ratio. To be honest, I can't remember the last time I had an issue with any of their products. It is refreshing to know that if I do experience an issue, a fix is an email away. Go team Monoprice!

Monoprice

Until January 28, you can get OnOne's Perfect Effects 8 Premium (standlone, Lightroom, Aperture, Photoshop Elements 10 compatible) for FREE! This app works on both Windows and Mac.

This app is valued at $US99 so FREE is a fantastic offer on this quality app.

The special offer link is here.

The best part of my iPhone is the amazing camera it contains. It is always with me and allows me to capture moments that would otherwise be lost forever. For these immediate situations, I grab my iPhone and quickly snap a picture. Then there are times when I want to use a tripod (group shots, self shots or nature photography) but what tripod mount is the best. My local electronics store has several dozen (all of which are terrible by the way).

In 2010, I backed a Kickstarter campaign for a creative tripod mount called the Glif for my iPhone 4s. A tripod mount meant I could take much cleaner pictures (no hand shake) and really improved my nature/street photography.

It immediately became my only tripod mount because it was  light, sturdy and easy to use. It also doubled as a smartphone holder when watching movies.

Then one day I dropped my naked iPhone on the kitchen tile and watch the back glass crack completely. I decided I needed to use a protective case and realized I could no longer use my Glif. If I wanted to use my Glif, I had to take it out of the case (which seemed like a hassle).

I test different phones throughout the year and the Glif only worked on my iPhone 4s. What a bummer. I tried other tripods but none matched the features, simplicity, design and usefulness of my Glif.

The new Glif

Then Studio Near came out with a brand new universal smartphone tripod mount and holder. It kept everything I loved about the original Glif but made it more wonderful (by allowing me to use it with any smartphone even while inserted into a case).

The new Glif fits any device that falls within these size parameters: 58.4-86.4mm wide by 3.1-12.7mm thick.

The new design is adjustable using a special wrench which means you can hold any smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S4, Nexus 4/5, HTC One, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5/5s, Motorola Moto G, Motorola Moto X, etc). It can be used as a tripod mount or a prop for watching movies.

Above you can see an iPhone 5s with a LifeProof case and a naked Blackberry bold. For the business traveller, the prop-up feature for watching movies works great on a plane food tray.

Build Quality

The Glif is designed and built in the USA from a high quality rubberized plastic. It provides a nice non scratching surface for your device. It ensures you have a solid  non-slip grip when holding in your hand and makes it more scratch resistant. 

When you adjust the Glif, you can feel a well design screw mount system that is solid and will last many many years. during my testing phase, I screwed and unscrewed the Glif mounts at least 50 times (on each side) and they felt as good on the 51st time as they did on the first.

The tripod mount is metal with overloaded plastic holding it in place. The mount is a standard 1/4"-20 thread and there is no wiggle. Everything is tight and solidly built.

The kit

Here you see the Glif, the hex key and the keychain attachment. In honesty, the older glib was smaller and you could carry it on your keychain but I wouldn't carry this on my keychain everyday. 

Verdict

This is one of those products that I knew I would love and my tests just confirmed that.

When you acquire a new smartphone, the first accessory you should buy is a case, the very next accessory is the Glif.

Since first using a Glif for the first time  almost 4 years ago, I have had one with me all the time since. It goes to work with me and on my many travels across the world. And the biggest advantage of the new version is that it is future proof. You know that it will work with whatever you buy next. Great investment protection.

You can get a Glif directly from Studio Neat here.

Everyone's favourite leaker, evleaks, says the popular Android keyboard Swiftkey is coming to an IOS device near you.  But don't pop the champagne just yet because its not what you think.

It seems the company will be releasing an app called Swiftkey Note. Swiftkey note looks like a plain clean looking notes app with the Swiftkey magic keyboard built in.

We don't know if this is a prototype app to encourage other IOS app developers to license Swiftkey for their app do well just have to wait and see.

Sunday January 25 update

Our friendly neighbourhood leaker has provided some new pictures for your viewing enjoyment

Google is sponsoring the Pwnium 4 hacking competition taking place at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver in March. Like previous years, Google will use this contest as an opportunity to confirm the security of its Chrome products or find bugs that need fixing.

El Goog (aka the sultan of search, aka Google) is offering :

• $110,000 USD: browser or system-level compromise in guest mode or as a logged-in user, delivered via a web page.
• $150,000 USD: compromise with device persistence: guest to guest with interim reboot, delivered via a web page.

You can read the chromium blog post (link)

I am a Canadian living in Quebec so I found the exclusion list particularly interesting. The contest os open to a wide range of participants except residents of Italy, Brazil Quebec, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Sudan. Nice to see Google hold Quebecers in high esteem and in fantastic company. See the rules page here.

Another day, another Apple rumour. This time the Wall Street Journal (link) is reporting that Apple will unveil 2 new iPhones this year. One with a display larger than 4.5" and another one with a display larger than 5".

Of course these rumour come from "people familiar with the situation" so take it all with a large block of salt.

They are predicting a model that looks similar to the iPhone 5s with a metal casing and a standard October launch. 

The most surprising rumour in the article is that they predict Apple will scrap the iPhone 5c. No explanation of why or when.

2013 was the year of Motorola. When most Android manufacturers were competing on specifications (processor, memory, storage, screen size, etc), Motorola decided to take a different angle and built a well designed, customizable, reasonably priced android device. This device, the MotoX, came with an almost stock Android OS with some small but powerful usability add ons. I'm an iPhone user and have been from the very beginning but the MotoX was the device that almost made me switch.

Motorola then came out with their lower cost MotoG with sold for as little as $179 without a contract. Motorola is  truly on the right track.

Denis Woodside, the Motorola CEO that made all of this possible, recently gave Trusted Reviews (link) an interview. Denis said Motorola understands that even the $179 MotoG is expensive for many emerging markets. An interesting quote:

“In much of the world $179 is a lot of money so there’s a big market at a price point of less than $179. We’re going to look at that and just delivering on that value promise is super important. I mean why can’t these devices be $50? There’s no reason that can’t happen so we’re going to push that.”

In addition to low cost phones, he confirmed that Motorola is looking to improve its device customization options. Today ,via MotoMaker, you can choose colours but he predicts you will be able to choose screen size and functionality in the next year or 2. You want a 5" phone with always listening and a motion co-processor, you should be able to order that.

A $179 unlocked phone would have sounded crazy 2 years ago but Motorola showed that it was possible to sell a decent desirable phone at that price. They showed that customization was possible so I can only assume they will find a way to deliver a $50 phone and extreme customization on the higher end.

My day job is in security so I read every Snowden leak with great interest. It is fascinating to see how well funded intelligence agencies can collect the data they need. All these these leaks seem to have tickled a nerve with some non American corporate IT managers who are now demanding that their cloud providers store their data outside of the US. 

But does that really make a difference?

In my opinion, the answer is no and here's why. The US Patriot Act (link) which gives the US intelligence community its super powers, compels any US company to turn over requested data regardless of where it is stored (it is not limited to data stored in the United States). Companies that allow customers to choose where the data is stored are providing a false sense of security to customers.

So how should we do to protect our data?

If you are a non-US company that wants to leverage a cloud service provider but that still want to protect your data from the NSA then you have to use a non-american provider and ensure your data is stored outside of the US. 

But even this doesn't guarantee total privacy. Keep in mind that most countries have local intelligence organizations (CSE in Canada, GCHQ in the UK, etc) and the leaks show that many of these agencies eagerly collect data for each other and share that data with limited control.

For the time being, your super secret data should be encrypted by you before it is sent to the cloud using Trust No One encryption but then you lose most of the value of these cloud services. Ultimate security means broken functionality. Ultimate functionality means broken security. You'll have to try to find a balance somewhere in between. 

A recent Netflix shareholder letter and an interview with GigaOM (link) makes it clear that Netflix is evaluating different tiered pricing plans.

On page 2 of the shareholder letter (link) , the CEO explains:

"Last April we introduced a 4-concurrent stream $11.99 option to begin our evaluation of plan tiering. Since late last year, we have also been testing 1-stream and 3-stream variants, as well as SD/HD variations, at various price points. Eventually, we hope to be able to offer new members a selection of three simple options to fit everyone’s taste. "

There is no need to panic as Netflix will take care of existing customers when they make the switch and they also state that no final decisions have been made on how and when this will change. 

Hastings did clarify that the tiered pricing will not be for access to content but rather for value added services (such as multiple simultaneous streams). 

Most fitness trackers are glorified pedometers. The same pedometer technology we have been using for 30 years with some extra software to make it look more modern. To really track your workouts and help you improve, you need a much deeper level of information collection and a more mature set of data analytics tools.

Over a year ago, I loved the idea of a fitness tracker called Amiigo (link).

Unfortunately the Amiigo is more than a year late to deliver their product and updates aren't very comforting. What I liked about the Amiigo was that was supposed to measure pulse & skin temperature in addition to the standard array of sensors so it could determine what exercise you are performing and how hard you are really working out.

Now a new entrant to the game called Atlas (link) is making some interesting promises.  Like the Amiigo, it is able to identify exercises (differentiating between similar movements like jumping rope and jumping jacks). It doesn't have all of the sensors that the Amiigo has but it seems much more capable than other quantifiable self devices (Shine, Nike Fuelband, Fitbit, etc).

They intend to make the app both IOS and Android compatible.

It's important to remind you that this is still being developed by a small smart up and is dependant on funding from IndieGogo (link). Keep in mind that many of these great ideas never materialize or come to market months to years late.

I think this is a great little device and it would be fantastic if they can get it to market. We'll just have to wait and see.

A Whatsapp cofounder came clean and praised Android for its openness. He further explained how much easier it is to add new features to its Android version compared to IOS. And to top it all off, he confirmed that Whatsapp has more Android users than IOS.

They have managed to collect 430M users (up almost 30 million since December). The company has 50 employees of which half work on localization and translation. 

Whatsapp is a lean organization which keeps costs low and has a steady revenue stream of $0,99 per account per year. Rumours have swirled that competitors like Facebook have offered up to $4B, the company has a strong desire to stay independent.

TechCrunch (link)

Motorola shook up the smartphone business when it released the revolutionary MotoX. It wasn't revolutionary because of its specs but rather because of the built in value-added features it brought (Moto assist, Moto migrate, always listening, etc).

One complaint Android owners have had for years is the huge unexplainable delay between a new version of the OS being released by Google and when it was made available to consumers through the carriers. Some updates take 12-18 months.

Motorola used this as a potential differentiator and promised a Kitkat update to Its phones quickly. Now we learn that the MotoX Kitkat update is coming to Rogers customers soon (link). Sure soon is not very comforting but it does mean the update is being actively tested internally. 

Everyone's favourite Tweeter leaker, @evleaks (link), has now provided an alleged view of the upcoming updated Samsung Android User Interface (aka skin). 

These predictive cards remind me of the Google Now cards. It looks like Samsung's cards are much more integrated with social media sites allowing you to check-in or share your location.

Based on what we have seen so far, this still seems like a design mockup therefore it is likely subject to significant changes. Also no one has leaked additional design parameters such as settings, user input, etc.

Samsung is known for taking risks and pushing their skin to differentiate itself from its competitors. 

All we can do now is just wait and see.

9to5Mac (link) is reporting that Adobe will release an iPad version of its Lightroom photo management app. The discovery was made when Lightroom for mobile briefly appeared on Adobe's website. The information was pulled when 9to5Mac asked Adobe for comment & clarifications.

The Adobe webpage didn't mention the iPad but an Adobe employee confirmed it was iPad centric to 9to5Mac.

Looks like Lightroom for iPad will sync with the full Lightroom via the Adobe creative cloud which means it will require a subscription and 9to5Mac reports that it will cost $100 a year (which seems fairly steep).  

Does this get you excited? Would you spend $100 (plus a full Lightroom subscription)?

In December, Microsoft released a horribly tested problem causing patch that was quickly withdrawn. Now they have released an updated patch which Microsoft assures fixes the biggest Surface Pro complaints such as battery life and a randomly waking up device.

It doesn't fix all the issues but it is a step in the right direction.

Just head over to your software update applet and enjoy some free device improvement now.