App Reviewamendation: Safe In Cloud
This was originally going to be a review, but it ended up sounding like a recommendation. So. There’s that. Like the title? No? Damn. …anyways, back in June of this year I wrote about password security, and how one might protect oneself from account compromises. Today, I’ve edited that post to include another great app for Android that helps further that cause, and it goes by the name Safe In Cloud. Do note however, that this app can be used for storing much more than passwords. You can store information about your car like what size tires it uses, insurance information, WiFi logins, or anything else you need to remember. It’s great for keeping all of your “need to knows” in one neat little place. To get a sense of where I’m coming from, allow me to share some back story. I used just about every password app on the Android market, and most of them are flawed in one way or another (ugly and dysfunctional user experiences were the heart of the problem for the vast majority). The last one I used was mSecure, and I used it for a very long time until I became fed up with the user experience and started to worry about backing up my passwords in the event of getting a new phone, since I read some stories involving the problems people had with importing their backup file. It seemed that the only solution would be to sync it with the desktop app on the computer. Well, turns out the price tag for the desktop app was $19.99. The app itself costs $4.99 (though I bought it for $0.99 during a sale), so together that’s $25. Now, I don’t know about you, but charging a customer for an app and then expecting them to pay an even higher price to receive what I consider to be required functionality, is ludicrous. I mean $4.99 is impulse territory, but $19.99 for what many could assume would come bundled with the app (especially due to some relatively tricky wording in the apps description at the time)? Unacceptable. So I went looking around for a new app, to see if there was something better before throwing more money at mSecure. The rest is history; I found Safe In Cloud, and I definitely appreciate the pricing route that the developer took with it. It makes it easy to recommend this app’s $1.99 price tag. Not just that, but the 100% functional desktop beta bears the ever-extravagant price of FREE. Note that I am unaware of the developers pricing intentions with regards to the desktop version upon full release, but if it’s $4.99 or less (or remains free), then I’ll be more than happy to pay the price to use it. I’m not cheap, and I realize that neither $1.99 nor $4.99 is a whole lot of money, but I am a firm believer that if you build a great app and people recommend it enough, then the sheer number of users will make up the difference. This is me doing my part, and I don’t like to recommend crap, so don’t take that lightly! Hopefully, if the developer decides to monetize the app a bit more, maybe he might consider doing something that wouldn’t impact normal users, such as–for example–a fee for early beta access, or additional icons (more on that below, it’s a customization option). All I know is that I hope the path taken...
Read MoreAmazon is Awesome
OK. Amazon? You rock. You rock hard. Let me start off by saying that before today, Amazon was already pretty awesome. Before I continue, I just want to mention the announcement that Jeff Bezos posted on Amazon’s homepage last month, where he stated that Amazon has the highest customer satisfaction rate ever attained by a retailer: “Amazon has been rated #1 in the National Retail Federation Customers’ Choice Awards, has been awarded the top spot in the MSN Money Customer Service Hall of Fame three years in a row, and is a JD Power and Associates 2012 Customer Service Champion.” “In addition, Amazon recently scored 86 – top score – on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), and 89 on the ForeSee customer satisfaction survey – the highest ever attained by a retailer.” And you know what? I couldn’t imagine anyone else beating them in that regard. If I’ve ever had a problem with ANY purchase, they’ve always sent me a replacement and given me time to mail-back the original defective product, instead of waiting for me to mail it back first. They also usually give you an account credit whenever you encounter any sort of problems. They’re awesome. But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about the announcements that were made today at Amazon’s Kindle event. At the event, Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos announced a refreshed Kindle line-up. Not only that, but Amazon has slashed some prices, too! Every new Kindle announced comes with a high-res screen–each one above 200ppi. The Kindle Fire HD has a 254ppi display, and as a reference, the iPad 3 has a 264ppi display–this means that the new Kindle Fire’s look incredible. Now, I’m a Nexus 7 guy myself, and I wouldn’t trade it for their new $159, $200, or $299 models any day of the week because I love what it offers. But for the price, the Kindle Fire is astounding. The $159 model is a revamped version of last years model; it’s the same except it has twice the ram, a 40% faster processor, and a longer battery life. Oh, and it’s $41 cheaper. The $200 model is the Kindle Fire HD, which has that super high-res display I was talking about, with 16GB of storage. Both of these are 7″ devices; however, Amazon is also releasing a Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ that comes with a 1920×1200 HD display. Additionally, each Kindle Fire HD has improved glare reduction, which–in relation to the iPad 3–reduces glare by 25%. But Amazon didn’t stop there; they have 2 antennas in each device now which offers faster Wi-Fi speed by cutting down on signal interference, and it’s also the first tablet in the world to feature MIMI, which apparently makes Wi-Fi signals much easier for the device to grab. The result of this is that it has faster Wi-Fi speeds than any other tablet, including the iPad 3. They’ve also upped the storage space to 16GB, and they still provide free cloud storage to all Kindle users. There are far more improvements that have been made to the Kindle Fire, some of which can be read about here. Did I mention that for $50 / year Amazon will give you a 4G connection with 250MB per month, 20GB of extra Cloud Storage, and a $10 Amazon Appstore credit? Yeah, they’re doing that. The Kindle Fire isn’t the only Kindle getting a refresh though; Amazon has created the first...
Read MoreGoogle Wallet Now Supports Any Credit or Debit Card
Finally, Google Wallet has mastered the art of walking. Let me start by saying that I first started using Google Wallet on my Galaxy Nexus as soon as it was available, and that the first free $10 you get for using the app for the first time is the only reason I even tried it out. But when I used it for the first time, man, I could see the future taking form–a world where we don’t need to carry around cards all the time just to make payments. Obviously, that won’t be tomorrow. But it’s getting closer. Unfortunately, there’s a problem–I don’t use MasterCard. I use Visa, which wasn’t supported by Google Wallet at its launch (more on that in a second). At the time, there were two drawbacks to Google Wallet; the first you already know–it only worked with MasterCard. Fortunately you could always load up a prepaid card in the app using any card you have, but topping up a card in advance just to make a payment you could have made with the card directly wasn’t exactly, well, you know. The second drawback, was that you could only use Google Wallet in stores with MasterCard PayPass terminals. The first problem has been fixed today with an update to Google Wallet (available in the Play Store), which enabled support for any credit or debit card to be used with it. The second problem however, is still present. Now, I don’t know of any plans that might be in place for rolling out PayPass to more locations–or if there will be other NFC solutions besides PayPass that are coming to stores–but until then, this is quite a problem for a payment method that is supposed to allow for you to pay with your phone. Hopefully something changes with regards to that soon, but in the meantime, Google Wallet is still incredibly cool; I just didn’t truly understand how great it was until I tried it out for myself. Let me cut back to when I first used Google Wallet–I had just talked to one of my friends about it and had shown him a YouTube video about how it was supposed to work. Then it dawned on us; duh, why don’t we just go and try it out for ourselves. But where is PayPass available? A quick search showed that MasterCard had already taken care of that with an app. After quickly installing the PayPass locator app on my phone, we were off. Sports Authority and McDonald’s were the only two nearby places at the time, so we opted for Sports Authority. It was only then that I discovered how difficult it was to find something of substance that was $10 or less at Sports Authority. Why $10? Well, if you were listening, Google gives a prepaid $10 card on Google Wallet to anyone who installs it. Free money–gotta love it. Back to the story. After looking around for a little bit, I opted for a new keychain in the form of an S-biner that also doubled as a bottle-opener. How nifty! No longer must I lug around that bottle-opener that I used to have to take with me everywhere! So. Yeah… …anyways, with my trusty new S-Biner in hand, we made our way towards the register, where the cashier promptly rang up my new toy keychain. And now for the moment of truth. I grabbed my phone from my pocket, pushed...
Read MorePassword Security: Protect Yourself from Account Compromises
Using strong, unique passwords across each of your online accounts is important. Really important. But you should already know that; I mean, you wouldn’t use the same key that you use to unlock your car that you would to open the front-door to your home or office, would you? Can we agree that, that would be pretty stupid? Yeah? So then why would you use your e-mail password for your online bank account? Each and every day, hackers are constantly trying to find security vulnerabilities in websites that they can exploit in order to gain access to your account, and even sites like LinkedIn can fall victim to these attacks. So, my question to you is this: if your Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail password was leaked today, would your other accounts still be safe? How about your bank account? Or PayPal? Rest assured that every single password that gets leaked will be among the first ones used when someone tries to brute-force their way into your account. At this point in time you may be wondering how on earth you could possibly remember–let alone keep track of–so many different passwords, so let me try to answer not just that question, but a few others in the expandable area below. If these questions do not pertain to you, just move on to Let’s Make a Password! Do I have to use a different password for every account? No, you don’t. It just depends on how important it is to you that certain accounts are completely secure. For example, if you visit plenty of online forums, or have to register to leave comments on articles on various different websites (such as this one), for all intents and purposes it doesn’t really matter if someone has access to all of those accounts, right? In this case, it’s OK to use one simple, generalized password across those websites. Just remember not to use a password like that for a site like Facebook, which deals with your personal identity. How can I remember all of these different passwords? There are plenty of good apps out there for your smartphone or your computer which you can use to store all of your passwords with. Trust only those who use AES-encryption and are stored locally; if it needs to be stored elsewhere, well, that’s a risk I myself am not willing to take, regardless of what anyone else says. 1Password on iOS and SafeInCloud, mSecure, Password Box, or LastPass on Android are some great apps to use. Personally, I recommend SafeInCloud for Android. My account was already compromised! What should I do? If you’ve already had your account compromised, make sure you scan your computer for viruses and malware (Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes are both excellent, free solutions that you can use), and don’t just recreate your password on that computer. It’s very possible that you may have been infected with what is known as a keylogger, which logs your keystrokes and sends them to the person(s) responsible for hijacking your account. If possible, try changing your password from a mobile phone first while taking the proper precautions by cleaning your computer and checking it for problems! Let’s Make a Password! Now it’s time to create those all-important passwords. When choosing a password, it’s important to keep in mind that no matter how much you love your mom, her maiden name is and always will be a terrible password. Why? Well, wouldn’t that be one of the first things you guess (following ‘12345’ and...
Read MoreReview: Google Music
After yesterday’s post I almost feel obliged to discuss Google Music. It’s one of the few areas where Google has tried to get involved and actually “got it right.” I mean, how many different products does Google try to get involved in, and end up poorly supporting or dropping altogether? Maybe they’re just fans of crowd-sourcing? Whatever the case may be, it seems that Google has narrowed it’s focus a little in order to try to deliver products that are a little more polished than they usually end up being. This time they got it right, yet not many people seem to be aware of what Google Music is truly capable of. Let’s explore that a little, shall we? Features: Upload 20,000 songs to Google Music for FREE. Don’t worry about DRM on the music that you upload. You can upload any music you’ve… acquired. Stream music to your phone or desktop. Make songs available offline for when you’re not near a WiFi or Data connection. Everyone reading this has used Pandora before, right? No? Here’s a quick rundown: Pandora is an app that streams music through your phone (or desktop, whatever–we’re talking about apps from here on out though). You thumbs up or down songs you like/dislike and it will try to play songs that it thinks you’ll enjoy. You can’t upload your own songs, and you can’t listen to it offline. Google Music allows you to upload up to 20,000 songs for free from your computer (regardless of where you got them from–even iTunes–so don’t worry). Now you’re free to delete those songs from your computer; reclaim that hard drive space–it doesn’t need to be used for music anymore! Now you can use that space for storing your entire 715 episode collection of Power Rangers, or something else, right? Yeah… anyways, you can easily create, modify, and remove playlists through your web browser, or the app on your phone–your call, chief. Should you decide you want to download all your music back to your computer, you’re able to do that, too. If you choose to buy songs through Google Music, they will not count towards your 20,000 songs, and as an added bonus, you can share the full version of any of those songs with your friends. Never again will you have to sync with your computer; the only syncing you’ll ever do is uploading your entire music collection from your PC to Google. So now that you’ve freed up space from computer, make sure you’ve liberated your phone as well. No longer shall you be ashamed of a phone with only 16GB of space! Just stream it baby. “Well Dave, that’s great; what if I want to listen to my songs and I don’t have a data connection on my phone, or I’m not able to access WiFi? What if I’m getting on a plane and I want to keep listening to my music?” Simple my friend! You can tag any song or playlist as “Available Offline” and it will be downloaded to your device, easy as that. Whenever I’m at home I enable WiFi on my phone and let Google Music download any songs I’ve marked this way, so that I’m not using my data connection to do it. Like I said before: Google Music is one of the few “new” products Google has put out that is incredibly well done. I’m really surprised that it hasn’t caught on faster; maybe because the beta...
Read More