31.8.11

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.

19.8.11

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.

3.8.11

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 :-)