Gareth and Matt are here with another UK update on the mobile front.
This week we discuss the Motorola Moto G and Gareth rants about the malware he found in Google Chrome.
Featuring Gareth, Matt and Phil
Users of LogMeIn Free will be getting emails today letting them know that the free version of the remote access product is to be discontinued. If you already have the email, no it’s not a hoax or phishing scam, the free service really is going away from today!
Users are being told that they must now sign up for the paid-for Pro account in order to keep using LogMeIn.
I’m sure that most of us can understand why the free service would be withdrawn, after all, it’s a very good product that was not drastically different from the Pro version, which will be staying. However, the worrying and irritating thing here is that there’s very little notice being given, it’s not from from TODAY and there’s only a 7-day grace period to get yourself sorted out!
After ten years, LogMeIn’s free remote access product, LogMeIn Free, is going away. We will be unifying our portfolio of free and premium remote access products into a single offering. This product will be a paid-only offering, and it will offer what we believe to be the best premium desktop, cloud and mobile access experience available on the market today. We will be notifying those impacted by the change in the coming days and weeks. In the meantime, we wanted to take a minute to explain the change and help users of LogMeIn’s access products better understand what this means for them.
Notification period
Impacted users will be notified via email and in-product messages. While messaging started today, users will be given 7 days to make a purchase decision about LogMeIn Pro. To be clear, the 7-day grace period starts when you next login to the LogMeIn service.
A big selling point of Chrome and more importantly Chrome OS is that Chrome extensions are meant to be clean and simple. A bragging community will tell you that you are safer than any other browser or Operating System. A bold statement that will surely have the sceptics investigating. What have they turned up? Problematic extensions!
Google is making a move to ban obtrusive extensions, because sometimes these can harm your Chrome experience. There is another recent threat Google is dealing with, though. Companies have been acquiring extensions from developers in order to turn them into adware clients. Google has banned a couple of these extensions: Add to Feedly and Tweet this Page. These were once popular extensions that helped users simplify some of the more routine online tasks.
Who is to blame? Are we seeing coders pushing extensions into the Google Store clean only to turn around a harvest vital information for the highest bidder? Not quite. In Add to Feedly’s case, the original developer, Amit Agarwal, was offered “a four digit” amount for his extension, which only took about an hour to code. Of course, he accepted and the transaction went smoothly. He regretted his decision when the new owner pushed an update to the extension. The new owner turned his helpful extension into an ad-serving machine. These were not regular ads either, they worked in the background and replaced links on every website! Original links were replaced by affiliate links without anyone’s knowledge.
Google’s new policies will help make this all better, though. If we have learned one thing, over and over again, it is that there is always a way for an OS to be corrupted by nefarious source. Google have been quick to act, have learned a lot from the experience and we can only hope that the whole Chrome architecture will return to the safe and reliable service we have grown so accustomed to.
The Motorola Moto G has been making the news quite a lot lately and its popularity seems to be surging. There’s now the Google Play Edition available for $179 for the 8GB model so it’s perhaps easy to see why this Android smartphone is being snapped up so quickly.
It may not have the best specification on offer but with a quad-core 1.2GHz CPU, 1GB RAM and a 720 x 1280 display, the Motorola Moto G is beginning to redefine entry-level.
As you know, we love to start out by unboxing a new products but our Motorola Moto G review unit is a beta device so arrived in a simple envelope. So our unboxing becomes an un-enveloping and I go hands-on with the Moto G, take a look at the hardware and then dig at the OS a little.
Full review up soon too.
ZTE and Virgin Media announce the arrival of the hotly anticipated ZTE Blade Q series in the UK. The 4’’ ZTE Blade Q Mini, which is available exclusively with Virgin Media, has been snapped up by leading retailers Sainsbury’s and Argos and will be available to purchase initially from Argos for £59.99.
ZTE have been quite busy releasing new devices recently and this new Blade Q Mini promises to deliver better specs for a bargain price. Howerver, with just 4GB of internal memory you’ll definitely want to invest in a MicroSD memory card.
You can see the full press release below and we hope to have some hands-on time with the ZTE Blade Q Mini soon.
How does a Moto Maker customized Motorola Android tablet sound to you? That’s the idea that Motorola is supposedly mulling over right now. Here’s a quote with the details,
CEO Dennis Woodside unveiled in a recent interview that not only Motorola is considering a tablet, but that Moto Maker, the service used to customize the Moto X, might branch out: we are looking at tablets. A lot of people have asked us to build a tablet using Moto Maker, to customize their tablet. There might be a day we do that, but the bigger opportunity for us is the five billion people without smartphones, the CEO added. Of course, Motorolas top priority, aside from the five billion people without smartphones, is, as Woodside puts it, mobile internet: We have to decide and convince consumers we stand for something and what we are focused on is the mobile internet.
It doesn’t sound like he is too committed to the tablet plan, but that could obviously change at a moment’s notice. What do you guys think of this? If they had the same competitive pricing and innovative features found in the Moto X and/or Moto G could Motorola surge back into a strong Android tablet position?
In what was the first case of motorist being stopped and given a ticket for wearing Google Glass while driving the defendant was found not guilty in a San Diego court yesterday.
The court ruled that Cecilia Abadie was not guilty as she had been cited under a code that makes it illegal to watch or use video or TV on the front of a vehicle while it is moving. Under the code it is a requirement that there be proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the device was in operation. This is something that the officer that stopped the defendant was not able to provide.
This seems like a positive outcome for Google and supporters of Google Glass, like me. However, Commissioner John Blair did state, following the ruling, that the he felt that there is sufficient scope in the code that bans the use of TV and Video to include Google Glass.
Whilst this ruling may not in itself set a legal precedent relating to the legality of Google Glass and usage while driving and this is likely to rumble on for some time to come until there is a definitive ruling and laws passed.
Bowers & Wilkins and Italian car manufacturer Maserati are dropping a special-edition pair of P5 portable headphones in the coming weeks. Having previously released an Maserati Edition 805 loudspeaker this makers the second collaboration between the two companies. The over-ear headphones sport the iconic Masterati Trident motif and feature a racing blue colour scheme. Whilst the “cans” have no active noise cancellation, they are made Apple friendly, with in-line microphone . Features also include gold-plated connectors, a remote control and sealed-leather earpads.
It looks like Asus has made the TF502T a reality. For the most part it is just a rebranding of the TF600T, but instead of a Windows RT OS, it now has Android 4.2.
Of course, the tab can batch up with a dock that includes a keyboard. It also has its own battery which can charge the tablet’s internal battery when it drops to a set level. The tablet and dock combined have a battery life of 16 hours. Their website doesn’t offer a price yet, but we can expect something soon at Mobile World Congress.
Yet another scoop arrives from @evleaks. His latest is confirmation of a Samsung made Nexus 10 tablet. Not only did he list the specs for the device, he also made mention of Android 4.5. Of course, more than likely, it will be toward the middle of this year before this tablet is officially announced, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that it will sport a new version of Android. The question remains, “Will it be simply an updated version of KitKat or will it be a completely new dessert?”
Also, by chance it would appear the Nexus 10 is completely sold out on the Google Play Store at the moment. How odd…
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