BlackBerry bringing Channels and Voice Chat to BBM for Android and iOS next year

Remember how excited you were for BBM to hit Android and iOS and then BlackBerry continued to fake us all out with imminent releases? Thankfully, that's now all in the past and BBM is a reality for those of us not on BB10 devices, but still its feature set leaves something to be desired. The good news is that BlackBerry intends to flesh out BBM in 2014, though not just for the app.

So what's up ahead? Arguably, the most significant changes are coming to Android and iOS users in the form of BBM Voice and BBM Channels. Think of BBM Voice as you would Skype or Google Hangouts -- it's essentially a way for you to chat with your contacts without touching your allotment of minutes. And Channels, if you'll remember from our preview this past summer, is basically BlackBerry's spin on the social network. Both are already available for current BBM users running BB10, so this addition really just brings the rest of BBM's outsider base up to speed.

BlackBerry's also looking to make sharing with BBM a less cumbersome process in the new year. Though the company hasn't elaborated fully on just how it intends to make photo and voice note sharing that much speedier, it seems as if the process will soon require less fussy UI interactions. Users will even be able to divulge their whereabouts with BBM, albeit on a temporary basis and make use of over 100 new emoticons. All of this is coming "in the next couple of months," so if you need something to sate your curiosity now, check out the video after the break.

Source: engadget

Cyanogen gets $23 million for 'Android on steroids' operating system

You can add all the apps in the world to that phone in the palm of your hand.

But the device manufacturer still has more say over how your phone looks and works than you do.

Some people in the tech community don't think it should be that way.

"I am a big believer that if you buy one of these devices, you should have the freedom to do what you want with it," said Steve Kondik, co-founder of Cyanogen.

Kondik, with co-founder Kirt McMaster, takes the open source code Google makes freely available to create CyanogenMod, an alternative to the Android software that manufacturers put on mobile devices that is itself built on Android.

You don't have to be a hardcore geek to want to personalize your phone. More people are exploring modifying their phone's operating system to extend the life of older devices or breathe new life into devices with buggy software. Others are looking for features they can't currently get on their devices.

Kondik says Cyanogen can get rid of unnecessary software installed by device manufacturers so that Android phones run faster and batteries last longer.

Cyanogen also offers features that some Android phones don't, such as mobile Wi-Fi hot spots, a new theme or look for the phone or putting your name, not the wireless carrier’s name, on the home screen.

It also has its own bells and whistles. One app lets you see at a glance all of your most recent conversations, whether on text, email or social networks. A privacy feature keeps apps from snooping on your personal information. And for true NSA-phobes, there’s a feature that encrypts text messages so you can have secure communications.

"We are like Android on steroids and LSD. There are a bunch of features we enable that Google does not enable," McMaster said.

The company, which has offices in Seattle and Palo Alto, announced Wednesday it has raised $23 million from venture capitalists. It said in September it had raised $7 million.

Cyanogen, which currently has 22 staffers, plans to hire as many as 60 more over the next nine to 12 months as it ramps up its operations and looks to break into the mainstream, McMaster said.

Andreessen Horowitz and other investors are betting the average Android user is going to see the benefits of breaking free from their phone's preinstalled operating system.

"Because consumers are clamoring for increased personalization and customization options, the Android open source community has been happily taking up the task of fulfilling that demand," said Andreessen Horowitz general partner Peter Levine. "We believe that [CyanogenMod] has the opportunity to become one of the world's largest mobile operating systems."

Analysts say it will be some time before the concept of modifying your phone goes mainstream.

"Mainstream consumers are not comfortable with installing system software unless it is packaged in a bulletproof manner and supported by the device maker," said wireless industry analyst Charles Golvin. "While these cooperative development efforts deliver meaningful benefits they will remain attractive largely to those who possess the technical chops to understand and be comfortable with the implications of installing a system-level update like Cyanogen."

Kondik started building Cyanogen in 2009 when he was developer in Pittsburgh. He said he was simply trying to "scratch my own itch" and add some features to his own Android phone.

At the time, you had to be pretty technically adept to customize your phone. Not anymore, Kondik said.

And that's why he and McMaster have taken what was at first an open-source project and turned it into a commercial venture.

Now they are looking to reach beyond Android hobbyists to people who are increasingly interested in personalizing their phones.

Cyanogen's basic service will be free of charge, they said. In the future, the company plans to charge for premium features. It's also shipping preinstalled on the Oppo N1 and Cyanogen says its operating system will ship on more devices.

But can Cyanogen break into the mainstream?

Though Cyanogen has ambitions of becoming a major force in mobile as an alternative to Apple's iOS and Google's Android, it's for now still a niche player. It says it tracks nearly 11 million users but thinks that's a conservative estimate.

Cyanogen has had some hiccups. It launched its installer app in the Google Play store in November. But Google asked Cyanogen to remove it because of concerns that it encouraged users to void their warranty by gaining root access to their Android phone and not giving consumers an easy way to return the device to its original state.
 

"We are actively talking" to Google, Kondik said. In the meantime, you can still download it from the website http://www.cyanogenmod.org/. 

Source: Los Angeles Times

Android customizer Cyanogen notches $23M

 

Talk about a mobile revolution.

A growing software movement is quietly taking hold on Android-based devices, allowing people to customize smartphones and tablets more to their liking.

What's known as Android "software mods" can soup up devices with mobile Wi-Fi hot spots, new looks, alternative text messaging and more. Personalizing Google's operating system has morphed beyond geeky obsession as a means to add new features.

Startup Cyanogen is leading the way. With "tens of millions" of installs, today it announced $23 million in funding for its popular CyanogenMod mobile software.

"Currently, we're like Android on steroids and LSD. There's a bunch of features that you can't get on stock Android ... that you just can't do with any other OS," says CEO Kirt McMaster.

Formed in 2009, Cyanogen is the brainchild of founder Steve Kondik, who launched his Android modification, now dubbed CyanogenMod, into the open-source software community. Developers can make their own modifications to the code to bring new features, and such enthusiast ideas can be adopted by Cyanogen.

"There's kind of a whole underworld," says Gartner analyst Brian Blau of those modifying operating systems. "It totally makes sense, but they have a lot of competition."

Cyanogen's development team wants to make customizing Android phones more accessible to the masses. The startup last month launched an installer in an effort to automate the installation process that was otherwise reserved for the ultra-tech savvy.

"The market is speaking, a revelation is under way here in the sense that users want a 100% compatible OS that is all about customization and personalization," says Peter Levine, a partner with Andreesen Horowitz. "I believe that trend will only continue."

Cyanogen's McMaster says the startup's variant of Android can boost battery life on devices. But he also says that there are a lot ways that apps will be able to communicate and work together to enhance device capabilities in ways standard Android versions and Apple's iOS can't.

Andreessen Horowitz led the funding round in Cyanogen and included participation from Benchmark Capital, Repoint Capital and China's Tencent. The investment in Cyanogen will be used to hire developers to boost the software's functions and ease of use. The investment round brings Cyanogen's total funding to $30 million.

Source: USATODAY

Facebook deletes controversial privacy policy language

Facing public pressure, Facebook removed a line from its privacy policy on Friday that related to teen users and advertising.

The line was in reference to Facebook's practice of showing a user's public profile picture, comments, and "likes" with ads. Opponents said the language assumed that minors had previously discussed the terms of the site with their parents or guardians, according to The Wall Street Journal. The issue ultimately landed with the Federal Trade Commission in the form of a complaint.
 

Facebook argued that the language was not intended to expand its marketing reach.

"We also proposed an update that we thought would help facilitate conversations between teens and their parents about using Facebook," Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan wrote in a blog post. "Specifically, we added a sentence that said if you are under the age of 18 you have talked to your parent or guardian and they also agree to some of our terms. This language was about getting a conversation started; we were not seeking and would not have gained any additional rights as a result of this addition. We received feedback, though, that the language was confusing and so we removed the sentence."

Source: CNET

BlackBerry Messenger for Android, iPhone delayed

BlackBerry said it will be at least next week until it relaunches the BlackBerry Messenger service for Android and iOS.

The delay comes amid some drastic problems that are hitting BlackBerry, including slow smartphone sales, layoff plans and an offer by an investment firm to take the company private.

In a blog post late Monday, BlackBerry Messenger head Andrew Bocking said workers are now trying to completely block an unreleased version of the BBM for Android app that first appeared on Saturday.

The unreleased app "resulted in volumes of data traffic orders of magnitude higher than normal for each active user and impacted the system in abnormal ways," he said.

About 1 million active users of the unreleased app suddenly appeared on Saturday, and BlackBerry quickly realized that the "only way to address the issue was to pause the rollout for both Android and iPhone."

Both rollouts had been scheduled for the weekend.

In addition to trying to completely block the unreleased app, BlackBerry is adjusting the system to avoid a similar scenario down the road. "While this may sound like a simple task, it's not," Bocking said. "This will take some time. I do not anticipate launching this week."

BBM has about 60 million monthly users on BlackBerry devices and the product is considered a bright spot in an otherwise dismal year for the Canadian smartphone maker.

On Friday, BlackBerry said it plans to take a nearly $1 billion write-off in its second fiscal quarter because of poor sales of smartphones, primarily the Z10, and would lay off 4,500 workers out of more than 12,000.

In August, BlackBerry created a special committee to study a possible sale of the company, and on Monday, the company announced that Fairfax Financial Holdings of Toronto has offered to buy Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry for $4.7 billion and take the company private. The deal is expected to close by Nov. 4.

Fairfax already owns 10% of BlackBerry shares. Its CEO, Prem Watsa, resigned from BlackBerry's board when the formal search for buyers kicked off in August.

In a statement released Monday, Watsa said that Fairfax would execute a long-term strategy at a privately-held BlackBerry "with a focus on delivering superior and secure enterprise solutions to BlackBerry customers around the world."

BlackBerry had said last Friday that it planned to focus its smartphone business on enterprise and "prosumer"-centric devices, and that its product portfolio would be cut from six to four devices.

The Z10, which first shipped in the U.S. in March, is a full-screen touchscreen phone marketed as a consumer-centric product. BlackBerry's move into the consumer market represented a clear departure from the company's long-held reputation as a provider of smartphones to business users, especially those seeking a physical qwerty keyboard.

BlackBerry attributed slow sales of devices like the Z10 to the high level of competition in the smartphone market, where BlackBerry products are pitted against many popular Android phones, such as the new Galaxy S4, and Apple's iPhone, including the brand-new 5S and 5C models.

Roger Entner, an analyst at Recon Analytics, said BlackBerry is "going through massive losses and it is unclear how long [Fairfax] can keep the company afloat with no sales and a new product [the Z10] that flopped."

Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9242630/BlackBerry_Messenger_for_Android_iPhone_delayed

Google fixes lengthy, widespread Gmail glitch

A Gmail glitch that took about 10 hours to fix and hit close to 50 percent of the webmail service's users has been fixed, ending one of the longest, most widespread Gmail disruptions in years.

Affected users endured email delivery delays and difficulties downloading attachments due to a still unexplained bug first acknowledged by Google at around 10:30 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time Monday. The company declared it patched at 10 p.m.

On its Google Apps Status site, the company pegged the start of the problem at close to 9 a.m. and its resolution at 6:30 p.m.

Prevention

On Tuesday, Google offered more details about the cause of the problem and the steps it's taking to prevent it from happening again.

The cause was a "very rare" dual network failure, which brought down two separate, redundant network paths, according to a blog post from Sabrina Farmer, senior site reliability engineering manager for Gmail.

"The two network failures were unrelated, but in combination they reduced Gmails capacity to deliver messages to users," she wrote.

Over the next few weeks, Google staffers will work on bulking up network and backup capacity for Gmail, as well as on making Gmail's message delivery more resilient in the event of a network crash, according to Farmer.

"Finally, were updating our internal practices so that we can more quickly and effectively respond to network issues," she wrote.

The issue affected individuals who use the free version of Gmail as well as businesses, schools and government agencies that pay for it as part of the Google Apps cloud collaboration and email suite.

In the U.S., the disruption covered most of the workday on both coasts, which heightened the impact of the bug for millions.

People who depend on Gmail for critical tasks took to Twitter, discussion groups and other online forums to express their frustration.

The last time Google gave an official figure for active Gmail users was more than a year ago, when it said there were more than 425 million.

Assuming conservatively that the service now has about 450 million active users, Monday's disruption likely affected more than 200 million users, plus senders on other email platforms whose messages weren't received in a timely fashion.

Even Google gets data outages

Google said that the severity and length of the impact varied among users. About 29 percent of messages received were delayed by an average of 2.6 seconds, but some mail was "severely delayed."

"We apologize for the duration of today's event; we're aware that prompt email delivery is an important part of the Gmail experience, and today's experience fell far short of our standards," the company wrote on the status site.

The incident is a big deal for both Google and those affected, but it shouldn't on its own dissuade CIOs from using the suite, said Forrester Research analyst TJ Keitt.

"Data centers hosting multi-tenant collaboration services aren't immune to disruptions. So, when they happen, the way to judge the vendor is on how well they identify and resolve the problem, and then inform the public to how they resolved the issue," Keitt said.

Using that criteria, Google's updates throughout the duration of the incident could have been more transparent and detailed regarding the nature of the problem and the strength of the fix that was put in place, he said via email.

"They have clearly not communicated this publicly, so I hope they've been forthcoming with this information with their clients," Keitt said.

Meanwhile, Matthew Cain, a Gartner analyst, said the incident raises fundamental questions about what is considered downtime, especially as it relates to service-level agreements from cloud application vendors.

"If message delivery is delayed 15 minutes, is that considered downtime? What about 2 hours?," he said via email. "The move to cloud email puts a spotlight on these essential questions about how to meter and compensate for subpar messaging performance that is not traditionally classified as 'downtime.'"

Updated 10:15 a.m. 9/24/2013 with information from Google's Sabrina Farmer

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049306/google-fixes-lengthy-widespread-gmail-malfunction.html

A Constitutional Primer from Google

Whether you’re a high school student struggling through U.S. history class or a legal expert helping a budding nation write a new constitution, Google’s new tool for examining and comparing founding documents from around the globe is a neat new resource.

Launched Monday, Constitute is a digitized archive of founding documents from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe that also helps visitors examine hundreds of constitutional themes, such as rights, duties, culture and identity. As Google’s Brendan Ballou explains, “If you are writing a constitution and want to know what African constitutions have to say about the rights of women after 1945, you can do that in just a few clicks.”

Using seed funding from Google Ideas, the internet conglomerate partnered with researchers from the Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP), who hatched the idea to source and reference the content in 2008.

With the turmoil in Somalia, Syria and Egypt leading to either new constitutions or or revised ones in those nations, exploring the international landscape of constitutions feels especially timely.

Watch the Google video below to learn more about how it works:

Source: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/09/24/a-constitutional-primer-from-google/