Motorola Xoom

Yes I know I haven't posted in my blog for some time, I'm working on some new ventures almost 24/7, I promise to update you with some more details ASAP.
Now for the post, some of you asked for the Motorola Xoom review, so here we go:

Motorola Xoom Box

"Xooming" is pretty comfortable experience using an Android tablet. Despite being a little heavy and a power button located on the back side so that one of your finger could reach it easily while holding in hands as usual, this stylish tablet left a good impression.

Motorola Xoom Inside the Box

Hardware works pretty well with stock Android 3.1 browser responses fast, multitasking works good, battery lasts long. Using touch keyboard is easy enough to compare with usual keyboard. Screen brightness and contrast is high enough to see the text and pictures precisely in any light conditions.

Motorola Xoom Back Side

Two stereo speakers are loud and sound good, but the fact that they are located on the back side so that they are not facing your ears makes it difficult to hear some details.

Android Market

Android Market is usual as on Android phones, except it lacks some applications that are available on phones. MicroSD slot is paired with SIM card slot, which is convenient. For example, Galaxy tabs lack MicroSD slots at all.

YouTube on Motorola Xoom

These were good and neutral points of the review. Now, let's see the bad ones :-)
Mini HDMI, Micro USB, dock and charger ports are located at the lower end of the device.
Yes, you heard it right, Micro USB and charger ports are separate!! WTF?! If they think that USB port is not able to supply the power that tablet needs, they should know that carrying a separate charger is not better than connecting a Micro USB cable to a wall charger that has USB connectors (and is more widespread).

Android 3.1 on Motorola Xoom

Back 5MP camera is not bad, video is good either. But front camera on any phone is twice better than on Xoom. Battery lasted all day of really heavy usage. Some iPad users told me they charge it once a week. True? But there's always a light in the end of the tonnel - a newly released Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will be officially available for Xoom users. It features really innovative points and I hope battery will last longer with smarter power usage.

Reading Book on Motorola Xoom

Once again, I want to thank Timur Lander, Android expert and the co-author of this post.
BTW, My next post is ready to be published for some time, I can promise that it will be quite different from all the latest posts here, hope to do it over the weekend.

QR Code for the masses

I was very busy since my last post, lots of events, meetings and one Geekcon (wait for special post soon). But one of the events I remember the most is the presentation of ScanLife - the compnay that want to bring the QR Code to the masses. I'm sure now days almost everyone heard about or saw it, it's look like this one:

Scan me :-)

It used for one important purpose, to connect between offline and online. Or in other words, to make it easy and quick for the user to do that. For example, you see an ad and want to know more about the product, instead of typing the web site address of the product, you just scan the small QR Code on the ad with your cell phone and it will navigate you to the site automatically. Another example, there is an ad with a lottery where you need to send SMS with specific word to specific number. Instead of typing all the information, you just scan the QR Code and you have the SMS ready with the phone number and the text, all you need to do is just to click Send. And there are lots of other good examples.

ScanLife Logo

The irony is that the QR Code created by Toyota subsidiary already in 1994 (more on Wikipedia) and became popular only in the last few years thanks to companies like Google and ScanLife that pushed it to the users, as you know it's all about marketing (and timing). And there is also one important aspect that I like the most. Unlike in the online ads where you can measure everything, how much you spent on each ad and how much users you have from each ad or campaign, in offline ads you almost can't do it, you just put your ad on the billboard or in the bus station and hope that someone will see it.

No. of scans for each bus station for example.

Well now you can, with the ScanLife management system you can see exactly how much people scan each of your ad, and it can help you to save money, by putting targeted ads exactly where your audience is. Viva la Revolution!

New look for Blogger (Google Blogs?)

Cool, I guess it's one step before Blogger will become Google Blogs and part of the Google's full products redesign, there is new look for Blogger:

Blogger new look

Even the people from Google write in the blog that it’s been a few years since we made major updates, and finally the design it's up to date. Here's how you can get it in the next few days:

Click on the "Try the updated Blogger interface"

At this point you can always go back.

I'm writing his post already using the new look, although there is almost nothing new "under the hood" but it's still nice make over.

New Post

I think it's just the time for the blogging comeback. You can find more details about the new look here.

Google Milestone 2

Well, the last post on this blog was about Motorola Mobility event and that I've got the Motorola Milestone 2 on the same day of the post. But like the lyrics of the famous song "What a difference a day made, twenty four little hours"... Google acquired Motorola Mobility and the world is not the same anymore. Anyhow there are enough speculation about this issue on the web so lets just stick to the review.

Motorola Milestone 2

A Stone. Milestone.

So... hope all those eye-catching bugs will be eliminated in announced software update for Milestone 2... Cause now being in the state of Android 2.2 "Super - Motophone" with sliding keyboard (rare option these days, especially for Android) this device is heavier in usage than even his physical "brick" weight of 170 g (more than BigMac!!! ).

Motorola Milestone 2

There is a few very important points that many other smartphones really lack today. Especially build quality. Awesome! Feels like you have one solid "stone" in your hand, that doesn't creak, doesn't slip in hands and all tactile feelings are confident. I'm not really sure how to express the quality level of vibration point in the phone devices. But somehow ALL Motorola's vibro's are more pleasant... Vibro reaction of buttons and touches is shorter than on the other phones, and IMHO that's the way it should be. Not like you're fast typing on any touchscreen and the phone shakes constantly...

Motorola Milestone 2

5MP camera is not bad, but it's still not 8MP or HD-recording like on many smartphones.

Sound quality remind me of Motorola's partnership with Yamaha, when they released ROKR and RAZR and some other phones, equipped with Yamaha sound processor. That meant that the music played on this phone had to be (and it was!) of amazing quality. But this was only a memories.

Motorola Milestone 2

What forced Motorola to use Android 2.2 on a device that has far not loser's hardware? 

Hello, it's 2011 today!!! we want Gingerbread!!! (Shhh... some Google buddies must already be taking care of that :-) Anyway... Google had what Motorola hadn't, Motorola had what Google now owns. Should this mean that in a couple of years Motorola would be suing Apple for any design copyright of Google? It should be so, cause joint work of good software and good hardware should equal to best product.. we'll see).

Motorola Milestone 2 Package

By the way,  Motorola Xoom tablet has more than efficient Android 3.1 onboard (while others have 3.0). Has to be a bomb! Wait for the full review in the next posts.

P.S. I want to thank Timur Lander, avid technology fun and the co-author of this post.

Motorola is back

Nostalgic Intro (Already become tradition for this blog :-)

In the early 90s, when I was young (younger than now :-) computers were expensive and rare, one per home/family, if any at all. In the late 90s they became cheaper and popular, so I had 2 in my room, one in my brothers room and one sort of HTPC in the family room, I even was the first one in my area to setup wired network for Internet sharing, that was very cool, but there was one big problem with that, and it was even bigger a few years after that at work, when I had 2 desktops, laptop and cell phone - files and data synchronization.

The comeback logo?

I'm sure most of you spending lots of time in coping data from cell phone to laptop, from laptop to disk-on-key etc.. No wonder there are so many companies and products trying to solve this problem; SanDisk U3, DropBox, Google Bookmarks, Chrome Sync, Chromebook and the whole "Cloud Computing" concept in general. But it's still not the same like using only one device. That's why when I first heard about the Modu (RIP) one cell phone that you can use as your main device, I liked the idea, but not the implementation, guess I was not the only one, since the company was closed this year and even their site is down.
(Irony #1, in the Modu Wikipedia article, there is a link to Motorola Atrix in the See also section, saw it after I almost finished this article.)

Charlie Henderson, GM EMEA Region at Motorola

Last week I was invited to the presentation press conference event of the new products line by Motorola Mobility (Now independent company) Milestone 2 bussiness smartphone, Xoom tablet and the Atrix high-end smartphone, when about 90% of the time spent on the Atrix, and there's a reason why, this phone is AMAZING. It's Android based, dual core processor, 1 GB DDR2 RAM cell phone with the regular features microSD, 5.0 MP camera ..

Motorola Atrix

But the major two features of this phone IMHO are; First, it's extremely fast, you can see it by the spec already, at least at the demo it runs HD and multitasks very good. Hope I'll get him soon and will be able to really test it and write about it (Ahm Ahm ;-) Second, are the Accessories, and that's why important that this phone is fast, with the Standard dock or the HD multimedia dock you can easily turn your phone into a home media center with HDMI and remote control or to a home/office Webtop, and with the Lapdock to a fully functional laptop, and there is also Vehicle dock for you car.

HD multimedia dock

Now imagine, you wake up in the morning, eat, drink and all the blah blah, drive to the office using waze while talking on the same phone, in the office you use the same phone as your computer, on the road you use the same phone as laptop, in the evening at home you use the same phone to watch movies, no need to copy or synchronize anything. When you break or loose your phone, you get new one with all the "lost" data from the Cloud backup. O and yeah, no one can use your stolen data since there is fingerprint scanner on the phone! I think my dream is coming true ;-)

Giveaways, should I make it to another blog's tradition?

Nostalgic Outro aka Irony #2
The big irony that my very first phone was StarTAC by Motorola, yes not Nokia 5110 ;-)
I bought it in 1997, one year before the Nokia boom. It cost me around 3,000 NIS, you actually need to double or even triple it to get the price it would cost now days. Ahh for a high-school student it was well spent money that I earned very hard, and I liked him very much. Since than I never used another Motorola phone (except the Motorola Spirit device in the car and if you read this article you know why I hated every moment of it. Yes, since I had to synchronize all the contacts between the 2 phones every time)   After the StarTAC I used only Nokia, Nokia, Nokia, iPhone (very short period ;-) Samsung, Nokia and now BlackBerry, although I'm very happy with this device (Yes I really do!) I think it's time for Motorola to comeback,  and maybe people will really start to "Think Different".. (Irony #3)

Update 03/08/2011 16:30:
That was fast, less than 24 hours from this post and I got this one for test ;-) Thank you!

Motorola Milestone 2

Update 15/08/2011 14:30:

Google buys Motorola Mobility for $12.5bn ;-)
A few friends reported that this page is already offline so just use Google search:
Google buys Motorola Mobility

Here are some more links:
http://investor.google.com/releases/2011/0815.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/supercharging-android-google-to-acquire.html
http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/15/breaking-google-buys-motorola-for-12-5-billion/

P.S. My post title was sort of predictive.

P.P.S. In the next few days I'll post my Google Milestone 2 review :-)

Ferrari & Kaspersky

What's the connection you ask? (Except the fact that they're both very famous last names ;-)

I'll explain, but first I have to take you about 10 years ago, when I was huge Ferrari fan. No, the truth is that I have to take you a few years before that, late 90s, when I still wasn't F1 fan. While my only 10 years old brother used to watch it regularly, and I asked him every time, "what's so interesting in watching 20 cars doing almost the same for more than 2 hours?" Until once he said, "Just sit, watch and you'll see!" Since then I was hooked up for the next few years.

Shame on me for abandoning this hobby for the last few years blaming lack of time and other excuses.. Anyway last week I saw a few photos on Facebook from the Moscow City Racing and wrote "I want to be there!!!" Lucky me and 2 days after that I was invited to special Ferrari & Kaspersky event in Israel.

Dancing Camael pub and brewing company

At the very unofficial event, that took place at the Dancing Camael pub and brewing company, Alexander Moiseev from Kaspersky, the man behind the partnership between Kaspersky and Ferrari explained that it's more than regular sponsorship, Ferrari F1 cars even use some special software by Kaspersky, apparently this guy is also race driver by himself. And I thought to myself, isn't that cool when you can combine your hobby and work, or to sponsor your childhood favorite team, Ferrari for example ;-)

Alexander Moiseev

After that, Ilan Froimovich from Power Communication - local Kaspersky distributor, explained that all the hype around the "Cloud computing" in the last few years is nice, but you still want local software to protect you, totally agree with that! What reminds me that it was very long time since my last laptop/cell phone/email local backup, and what about you?

Giveaways: Condoms, Kaspersky Internet Security Special Ferrari Edition and Official Ferrari Cap

They also presented the Kaspersky Internet Security Special Ferrari Edition and gave us a copy. So now after I have Ferrari Cap I think it's time to back to this hobby and maybe even buy some tickets for one of the next season races.

Ferrari F150 Simulators at the event

And finally, If you will have enough money/time/power what team/company will you sponsor and why?

Update 26/07/2011 13:00: 
This morning I twitted about this post, 5 minutes after that I've got email with the subject:
"Eugene Kaspersky (@e_kaspersky) is now following you on Twitter!" he also retweeted my post:

Twitter

Really nice, this is how top companies and their CEOs should act these days.

Update 31/07/2011 12:30: 

Anonymous source sent me this print screen and wrote that Kaspersky Lab even used my blog for good internal case study:

Kaspersky Intranet/Newsletter

WOW! Thank you guys! I really appreciate it.

Forever Young

Dear Diary, (Oh that's sucks..)

Yesterday I met school days friend, haven't seen him for the last 10 years (and he doesn't have Facebook ;-) After solving some old conflict we had  (His ex told him some juicy stuff about me and her, probably to make him jealous and marry her faster, few people added some more details to the story and here you go... ;-)

Anyway after solving this conflict like real men should do it, we talked about the fact that we both haven't changed at all in the last 10 years, while he told that he feels 'bad" about it, I told that I feel great with that, I feel great feeling young!! Everything I achieved till now is because I feel young. And I don't mean childish, after all I make my own money since the age of 14, a few years after that I became completely independent and since than making hard decisions every day without any problem.

What I mean by being young is; live easy, accept new ideas, do experiments, take risks etc..

Well what I think we should do to be "Forever Young" (at least until we'll invite some elixir) is:

• Sport - keeps your body and mind healthy and in-focus.
• Accept new ideas, try new things, experiment with your life.
• Take risks, with all what it takes.
• Don't think that you know everything, always be ready to ask others and to learn something new.
• Find wife/gf that is younger than you ;-) A tip that one of my partners gave me long time ago, if not try to talk and collaborate with people that are younger than you on daily/weekly basis.

Let me know if I missed something?

Motivation

For the last few days after finally setting up my new blog, this time under my own site, I was thinking about  the reasons why I want to get back and write regularly with all the lack of time that I have;

• Because I want to log my life?
• I want to share my experiences with other people?
• I want to get invites to cool events as Blogger?

So, yesterday while training at the Gym and checking Twitter between sets I found this Twit by Paulo Coelho.

I think it's good enough as a start motivation for blogging, especially that the last few years were very tough for me, let's see if I can make the most of it.

Let me know what is your motivation for writing?

Soon

Really ;-)

Meanwhile, you're welcome to visit one of my old blogs:

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/hagai
http://hagai.blogspot.com
http://hagai.livejournal.com/