Google’s Knowledge Graph: Wikipedia on steroids, or the beginning of the end for the web?

Further establishing itself as the Borg of the web, Google is adding a Knowledge Graph capability to its search engine. Simply put, Google will now try and answer your question right on the search results page — no need to actually visit Wikipedia or your favorite travel information site when Google can simply absorb their data and present it to you nicely formatted along with a few choice ads. Google already has most of the video content on the web through YouTube, most of the geographic information through Maps and Earth, and an increasing share of the email, so why not? The user gets a quicker, and likely more useful, set of facts about their search.

At a glance, faster results are a no-brainer benefit for everyone. But like the spread of cheap, imported goods, there is a corrosive downside. Web publishers get cut out of the loop, risking their business models and ability to create the content that we all rely on. Google risks crushing the web in its embrace — unintentionally loving it to death. Looking more closely at Knowledge graph shows how the process works and why you may want to worry more than a little about it.

The Google Knowledge Graph — Baby steps to an information monopoly?

Google’s Knowledge Graph is brand new — “only” containing an estimated 3.5 billion facts about 500 million objects — but of course it will grow as rapidly as the Googleplex can organize additional information. Even now it is a powerful tool for those who want quick answers, and don’t like wasting their time surfing to get them — loosely described as semantic search. For comparison, Wikipedia currently has less than 30 million pages. When Google decides a search is about one of the 500 million objects it has categorized, it displays the facts it has about that object in a separate “knowledge panel” on the right of the page. Traditional search results and ads appear in the main body of the page on the left.

Google’s Knowledge Graph shows not just links for the Bronx Zoo, but a panel of facts on the right-hand side of the page

You can see here that Google has pulled out a map showing the location of the Zoo, along with some facts from Wikipedia — which to its credit are linked and attributed to Wikipedia. It also shows me other topics that those curious about the Bronx Zoo are interested in. Interestingly, the knowledge panel is less useful in this case than the first search result — which reports the top links from the Bronx Zoo site itself — but for many topics which don’t have a definitive website the knowledge panel is a handy place to get started with research.

Google vs. Bing: Do you trust the web or your friends?

While Google is using brute force to tame all the information on the planet in its effort to bootstrap the semantic web, Bing is taking a more surgical, and social, approach — by sifting through data about and from your friends to decide what might be important to you. Once you turn on Bing’s new Sidebar and sign into Facebook, Bing will happily crawl through any and all information it can find in your friends’ profiles or posts to cough up a variety of factoids. Some can be very useful — like a friend’s photo album from a place you’re interested in visiting, or the fact that someone has just reviewed a movie you’re curious about. Others are at best trivia — like the information that a long-lost business colleague used to live 100 miles from a place you’re considering for vacation, or that the musician “Taj Mahal” recently tweeted, shown in response to an attempt to find out which friends might know something about the Taj Mahal in India.

Comparing the two, so far I’d give the edge to Google and the Knowledge Graph. Useful snippets from friends (and I’ve got around 800 FB friends, so that should be a good sample) are few and far between in my efforts to use the new Bing sidebar. I can see that with time and improved linking technology the amount of useful information from friends will improve, but it’s hard to guess by how much. For my Bronx Zoo example, Bing’s sidebar coughed up a photo of a friend’s daughter, presumably taken at the zoo, as well as letting me know that two of my friends used to live in north New Jersey towns. None of it very useful in planning my event there.

Bing also offers an “ask friends” where I can ask my friends to help me with a search. Frankly, I’m not willing to even experiment with that. If I have a topic that I’m not sure how to approach, I’m old-fashioned enough to mail a couple friends who I think might be able to help out. So posting a search would only be useful if I could make it visible to just a few friends, instead of all 800 — but that doesn’t seem possible yet. Ironically, because of the way Google+ got started — with circles from the beginning — the same idea might actually work for me if Google implemented it so that I could ask a particular circle. Hopefully Bing will also allow the feature to be restricted to particular lists of friends.

One advantage of Bing’s Social Search over Google’s Search Plus Your World, at least for me, is that Bing clearly separates the social results from web search results. It is confusing and frankly a little weird to be doing a web search on Google and have various posts and articles written by me or my friends mixed willy-nilly into the results. Sometimes they’re useful, but other times they just get in the way since I’m really trying to look outward for new information, not navel-gazing by re-reading my old articles.

Knowledge Graph: The end of web publishing?

Like the snake that eats its own tail, there is a very serious problem with the way Google’s Knowledge Graph is likely to grow. Over time it will pull more and more information into its database — likely it has already swallowed the useful parts of Wikipedia — and give users less reason to actually traverse the web and visit any of the sites from which it has gotten its information. In turn, of course, that will starve those sites of needed revenue (or in the case of Wikipedia, attention and donations) and cause them to slow their acquisition and publication of knowledge. How long will it be before the “Report a Problem” feature of Google’s Knowledge Graph becomes more important to the web than submitting a correction through the arduous Wikipedia edit and review process? The resulting paradigm clearly isn’t stable.

This problem isn’t lost on Google, although its current answers aren’t particularly satisfying. Google’s executive in charge of search, Amit Singhal, says that as search engines improve, users perform more searches and also create more traffic to external websites. The trouble with that bromide is that in the past the improvements have been related to providing more accurate links to external sites — inviting increased browsing — and now they are being geared at providing answers directly on the Google site, which is an entirely different thing that might well decrease subsequent browsing.

Google’s head of Search, Amit Singhal, at SMX on the issue of how Google’s Knowledge Graph affects publishers.

Singhal also explains that to survive websites have to move further up the value chain, and not simply answer questions the search engine is able to. He uses the annoying and trivial example of a site providing the answer to “2+2.” Unfortunately, that answer shows the issue isn’t really deeply concerning to him, and apparently to Google. There is no “bright-line rule” beyond which Google won’t venture, only practical limits on its technology. This sounds very similar to the issue with PC utility software vendors providing services which are eventually bundled into the operating system. Realistically, it’s a warning shot across the bow of publishers that Google considers anything anyone wants to know as fair game, and if it can figure out how to provide that knowledge within its ecosystem and keep all the money — it will.

Once Google has effectively tied its Knowledge Graph into its digitized library of almost every book on the planet and scraped the contents of the semantic web into its Googleplex, it will have a practical monopoly on access to many kinds of information — even if you have a site with some other perspective, users will likely need to find it through Google. Public opinion, and in turn public policy, will get shaped by which factoids Google serves up in response to controversial searches like “climate change” or “intellectual property protection.”

Google Knowledge Graph results for global warming feature a well-known climate skeptic and an activist. Fair and balanced, maybe, but certainly a step towards editorial control coming from Google.

There is something more than a little insidious and even terrifying about this prospect. By declaring itself a repository of knowledge, rather than just an honest broker providing equal access to resources on the web, Google is making itself the sole arbiter of truth — or at least sole editor of the presented truth. Even Wikipedia provides an open, community-driven, process for editing, reviewing, and correcting facts as part of serving the community. If Google continues down its current path without articulating a clear set of transparent checks, balance, and access rules — or limiting itself to the role of a “common carrier” for the web’s information — it is likely we’ll soon hear a clamor for extending anti-trust regulations to limit monopolies on the access to knowledge.

Read more about Knowledge Graph, or the semantic web

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How Google Drive just ate SkyDrive’s lunch

Today’s debut of Google Drive is case-in-point why you never show your hand first. Yesterday Microsoft detailed plans for SkyDrive, aimed at giving Redmond a leg up in the competitive cloud storage space. Today’s Google Drive announcement blows SkyDrive out of the water.

Even though Google Drive offers two less gigabytes of space (5GB versus 7GB for SkyDrive), the tie-ins with other Google services are the difference. For example, Google takes Google Docs and incorporates it into Google Drive. Like the standalone product, users are able to collaborate on content, which can then be commented on by anyone who its shared with.

Google Drive also offers drag-and-drop integration for both the Windows and OS X, and mobile access through individual apps for iOS (once the app is available) and Android, just like SkyDrive. Fair enough — but where Drive really shines is in search.

Google makes everything that you upload into Drive searchable. The content of scanned documents is searchable through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, and the company says image recognition technology will do the same for your images. That last part may be a little too much for some, but it is still more than Microsoft offers.

The only place Microsoft bests Google Drive is on extra storage. An extra 20GB of space (27GB total) on SkyDrive costs $10 yearly, with Google that will set you back about $30, billed $2.49 monthly. 100GB of space on Google Drive is $4.99 monthly or about $60 per year, with SkyDrive 100GB extra runs $50 per year.

Not to be outdone, Google offers additional capacity upgrades of 200GB to 16TB, ranging in price from $9.99 to $799.99 per month. That’s a lot more space than most of us will ever need, but the option is there.

Bottom line? Google Drive just ate SkyDrive’s lunch. Why did Microsoft let this happen in the first place, though? The company panicked we’re told.

Sources close to Microsoft tell ExtremeTech that the SkyDrive update was originally intended to launch next Monday (April 30th), but a decision was made to move the launch up one week based on the Drive rumors. There was a desire to get out first inside the company, it seems, although I am not sure they expected Google to launch the very next day.

Microsoft now finds itself in a predicament. Only a day old, the new SkyDrive already looks dated and nothing more than your average cloud storage service. On the other hand, Google comes out offering a set of compelling features above and beyond storage. Could Microsoft more tightly wound Bing into SkyDrive? It certainly could have. Microsoft does offer web versions of its Office platform to SkyDrive users, but they don’t seem as fleshed out and full-featured as Google Docs.

I have never been a fan of kneejerk reactions to the market as it leads to poor business decisions, which may have been the case here. Microsoft may have been best leaving to its original April 30 launch date to one-up Google rather than have its announcement overshadowed by its rival. Google wins again, and Microsoft is left scrambling to compete.

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Firefox 12 released, takes Chrome mimicry to the next level

Though version numbers are fairly meaningless at this point, I am happy to announce that Firefox 12 has been officially released. There are two major changes: Moving forward, Firefox (on Windows) will automatically (and silently) update, and — praise be — the Find function is now a lot better at centering the page on any matches.

The ability to silently update very closely mirrors Chrome, and really it’s a surprise that Mozilla has taken so long to introduce this key feature, after switching to the six-week rapid release cycle almost a year ago, with Firefox 5. While making the update process opt-in sounds like the right thing to do, it has basically resulted in a very fragmented install base. When Chrome updates, almost everyone immediately moves to the new version — Mozilla, on the other hand, now has lots and lots of users spread out across a huge range of browsers, dating all the way back to Firefox 3.

When you install Firefox 12, Windows UAC will ask you to approve Firefox Software Updater — and after that, you should never see an update dialog ever again.

Updated @ 14:55: You can disable automatic updates by going to Options > Advanced > Updates.

Unfortunately, despite what we previously reported, neither the New Tab Page or Home Tab made it into Firefox 12. Both features should arrive with Firefox 13, however — in just six weeks from now!

In other news, the latest Nightly version of Firefox 14 has removed favicons from the address bar; the icon will now simply display a globe, or a padlock if the site is SSL-secured — just like Chrome. This is primarily a security fix: Nefarious websites could use a padlock favicon to trick users into thinking that the site is secure.

You can download Firefox 12 from the official website, or if you already use Firefox your browser should prompt you to update soon. Check out the official Mozilla blog for the full release notes.

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ZX Spectrum: 30 years old, and still one of the cheapest computers ever made

Today is the 30th birthday of the ZX Spectrum, one of the most popular home computers ever made, and probably the single most important factor in the creation of the IT industry in the UK. The ZX Spectrum, made by Sinclair Research in Cambridge, England is usually considered the UK equivalent of the US-made Commodore 64.

Hardware-wise, the ZX Spectrum was completely unremarkable. There was an 8-bit Zilog Z80A CPU, a graphics chip capable of outputting 32 columns by 24 rows (256x192px) with 15 colors, and either 16 or 48KB of RAM. At just £125 ($200), however, the ZX Spectrum was incredibly cheap. The Commodore 64 cost $600. The BBC Micro, made by Sinclair’s arch rival Acorn Computers, cost £299. Despite costing just a fraction of its contemporaries, the ZX Spectrum had comparable functionality. All three computers had similar amounts of RAM and processing power, and all three had similar editions of the BASIC programming language.

How did Sinclair Research pull it off? Innovative design and aggressive engineering. From the very start, Sinclair Research knew that it wanted the ZX Spectrum to be as cheap as possible, and so almost every component was engineered from the ground up with penny pinching in mind. The main printed circuit board was kept as small and dense as possible, which resulted in a very lithe chassis (just 23x14x3cm, compared to the monstrous 40x21x7cm Commodore 64 and gargantuan 40x35x8cm BBC Micro). Instead of using a conventional keyboard with hundreds of moving parts, a rubber, chiclet “island” keyboard with just four or five parts was used. (In the eyes of original users, this resulted in the ZX Spectrum keyboard feeling like “dead flesh” — an early example of a tech meme.) The ZX Spectrum was wrapped in a plastic case and weighed just 550 grams (1.2lbs), compared to the metal, clunky 1.8kg (4lb) Commodore 64, and back-breaking 3.7kg (8.1lb) BBC Micro.

In short, the ZX Spectrum was simply better engineered than its contemporaries — much like iPhone, except Apple uses its engineering and supply line advantage to squeeze out higher profits, rather than slashing prices. Like the ZX Spectrum, it’s not like the iPhone uses fundamentally different silicon or materials — Apple is still limited by the state of the art — but through design, engineering, and supply line expertise, Apple simply manages to cram more tech into the same (or smaller) space — and with a cheaper bill of materials.

ZX Spectrum+, a later version that did away with the “dead flesh” keyboard

The ZX Spectrum would go on to sell five million units — not bad, when you consider there are only 30 million homes in the UK — and net Clive Sinclair, the owner of Sinclair Research, a knighthood for “services to British industry.” Curiously, Sinclair, a serial inventor, recently admitted that he doesn’t actually use computers — he prefers the telephone to email.

To this day, even after 30 years of being hammered at by Moore’s law and accounting for inflation, there are remarkably few home computers that have been sold at a lower price point than the ZX Spectrum (it would cost around $450 today). The Raspberry Pi, a British-made Linux-based PC that will be sold for around $25, is the obvious exception, and the spiritual successor of the ZX Spectrum.

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RIM says Android app ecosystem is a “cesspool,” but what if Google agreed?

The former king of smartphones, RIM, has been having trouble getting its fledgling PlayBook OS off the ground, even going so far as to build a system for running Android apps on the platform. This effort hasn’t exactly turned things around for RIM, which is still seeing the PlayBook falter in the market. In fact, the high rate of Android app piracy on its platform has resulted in a large volume of complaints from developers.

The solution, according to RIM VP Alec Saunders is to remove sideloading of third-party apps, which RIM is going to do in an upcoming software update. According to Saunders, RIM is making this move to avoid creating a “chaotic cesspool” like the Google Play Store. If it’s true for RIM, are Android developers suffering from excessive piracy because of sideloading on Android as well? Could Google disable sideloading and see a new renaissance for apps?

Impact on Android

If Google decided to end sideloading on Android, it would certainly make it more difficult to pirate apps — that is not in dispute. However, it would also hinder quite a lot of legitimate uses of the platform. Amazon’s Appstore for Android relies entirely on sideloading, which is why some early AT&T Android devices did not work with Amazon. Moving to seal up Android like a drum would more than likely result in a lawsuit from Amazon.

We would also see fabulous things like the Android Humble Bundle go extinct. The Humble Bundle is a pack of games for Android and other platforms that is sold as a batch of standalone APKs with most of the profits donated to charity. The folks behind this initiative only recently added support for Android, and killing sideloading would be the end of that.

A great many users would also likely be perturbed by the elimination of sideloading. Android allows you to backup applications and store the APK files for a rainy day. Without sideloading, those files aren’t good for anything. People in some regions, like China, where the Play Store is often blocked also rely heavily on the ability to sideload apps.

App developers, both professional and casual, would be hit hard as well. With the plethora of Android devices out there, developers need to test apps on a few different devices at the very least. Without sideloading, beta testing in the community would be impossible. Already cash-strapped developers would have to buy more devices for in-house testing.

Android is designed to allow application sideloading, and changing that would likely introduce more problems than it solves.

The community always wins

Even if Google agreed with RIM that sideloading was turning the Play Store into a cesspool, a hive of scum and villainy, or some other hyperbolic nonsense, killing sideloading wouldn’t stop people that actually want to pirate apps. Average Android users don’t even touch the system setting that enables sideloading. On the majority of phones, you will find that the Unknown Sources toggle is still un-checked.

Most Android users aren’t taking advantage of sideloading, and those that are won’t be stopped by the removal of the toggle. To see how this would go down, just look at another feature that users have unfortunately been denied access to: WiFi hotspot tethering.

Google announced wireless hotspot as a native Android feature back in mid-2010. The Nexus One had the feature, but virtually no other US devices have supported that feature natively. Carriers have almost universally removed free tethering from Android software builds in order to charge for their own services.

Not to be kept down, the community engineered various hacks to return the functionality, and every custom ROM (such as CyanogenMod) has native tethering. For anyone that needs hotspot and doesn’t want to pay, there are innumerable options to do so. Put simply, the carriers couldn’t do anything to stop determined individuals, and it would be the same story if sideloading was blocked.

Consider that even the iPhone, which has no supported method of sideloading apps, still sees rampant piracy. Check any torrent site on the internet and you will see batches of top iOS apps ready for download and installation on a jailbroken device. If iOS users are willing to go to these lengths to pirate apps, taking away sideloading on Android wouldn’t stop anyone on that side of the fence.

Unexpected results

Android used to have standard DRM that developers could apply to their apps. This system would encrypt apps in the Android Market (as it was known at the time), and block them from unregistered devices. This DRM was cracked, of course, and regular users often had to deal with missing apps when new software updates weren’t properly identified with the Market.

Google moved to a remote authorization system in 2011 that is easier to manage, but still can be exploited. Even if Google were to perfect this system, and reduce piracy on Android by a huge margin, it’s not particularly likely that developers would see a big sales bump. As we’re fast learning, an instance of piracy doesn’t necessarily equate to a lost sale.

France codified a harsh three-strikes system into law last year, and has been serving suspected infringers with warning letters for some time now. The effort has definitely reduced the rate of piracy, but the entertainment industry hasn’t seen the uptick in sales it expected. Instead, revenues havecontinued to slide despite a roughly 66% drop in piracy.

Android apps get pirated, yes, but stopping sideloading would not end piracy. The folks out to pirate apps would still steal content, leaving the law-abiding users to be inconvenienced. Even if Android piracy could be reduced, there is no evidence that app sales would go up. Cesspool is obviously a strong term, but any negative effects originating from sideloading apps is just a consequence of how the platform works — and it’s a platform that’s doing quite well, cesspool or not.

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With World of Warcraft fading, what will Blizzard do next?

World of Warcraft, Blizzard’s smash hit, golden goose, and the acknowledged most popular MMO on Earth (as certified by the Guinness Book of World Records) is past its prime. Subscription figures have fallen from 12 million just after the release of the last expansion to 10.2 million, due partly to the popularity of Star Wars: The Old Republic. WoW isn’t dying — it’s ridiculous to use that term given that the game could lose 90% of its playerbase and remain both profitable and one of the largest MMOs in North America — but it is fading.

At seven and a half years old, it’s no longer a fledgling upstart or a product in its prime — and that presents Blizzard with a bit of a problem. The company has been characteristically tight-lipped about its plans for the future, but there are plenty of clues about what the company plans to do next. From Battle.net revamps to Diablo III‘s focus on cooperative multiplayer, Blizzard is working to improve social integration both within each game and across its various franchises.

Short term, the answer to “what next?” is Pandas.

When Starcraft II launched in 2010, it did so alongside a revamped Battle.net and a new identification system Blizzard calls Real ID. Real ID is a service that ties your actual name and online status in any Blizzard game into the Friends list that pops up in Starcraft, World of Warcraft, or the upcoming Diablo III. Unlike a standard friends list, which only tells you if a person is online and in-game, Real ID-linked friends can communicate across different WoW servers and completely different games.

The company’s decision to give Diablo III away for free to anyone willing to commit to a 12-month subscription for World of Warcraft is also telling. True, it’s definitely a move aimed at propping up WoW’s revenue stream, but it’s also a tacit experiment with the idea of subscribing to Blizzard games in general rather than any specific title. The fact that Diablo III contains a dual auction house system that allows players to sell items for gold or hard currency is a further experiment in content pricing and an examination of what the market will bear (and how players will react).

Blizzard’s titanic, cohesive future

World of Warcraft has been an unbelievable cash cow for Blizzard-Activision, but attempting to clone its success is more likely to produce two stunted bovines rather than a second champion milker. MMO sequels that debut alongside their predecessors run the enormous risk of fragmenting and alienating an existing player base. If the second game duplicates the game mechanics and structure of the first, players complain that they paid $60 for a glorified patch, while a sequel with vastly different rules and structure alienates the players who made the first game popular. No MMO sequel has ever been more than a tepid success; the few that have been released often cannibalize their predecessors’ subscriber base, only for both games to crater as players who were used to a (relatively) balanced and well-functioning engine skip out on the erratic and bug-ridden sequel.

Blizzard is working on another MMO, but the game, codenamed Titan, is reportedly designed to appeal to casual players and to emphasize gaming with people you know rather than with strangers. Blizzard believes it can co-exist side-by-side with WoW by appealing to a somewhat different group of gamers.

What the company wants, long-term, is a unified network of gamers across its franchises and platforms. The company’s experiments with Diablo III suggest a possible future where games are available at a variety of price points, from stand-alone purchases to subscription packs. One of the hallmarks of Blizzard games is their longevity; moving to a hybrid subscription/freemium/cash auction house/God-knows-what-else model establishes revenue streams across multiple product families that aren’t tied to the growth and success of any single product.

Blizzard may be uniquely positioned to pull off what we we’d (very) loosely categorize as a “Facebook for Blizzard Gamers.” One of the marked oddities of online gaming is that there is no central social hub, despite the fact that a lot of us were playing Quake and Unreal Tournament across serial ports, IPX, and Heat.net. Gamers tend to cluster around forums for specific titles and websites devoted to general gaming coverage — and Blizzard owns three of the most popular franchises in video game history.

I’ve kept this write-up focused on trends rather than specific details, partly because it’s speculation on my part, and partly because I think it would be disingenuous to suggest that Blizzard has made any ironclad decisions as far as implementation is concerned. The free Diablo III offer is a great deal for anyone with an active WoW subscription who was going to buy the game anyway, but there’s a lot of valid concerns surrounding Blizzard’s decision to implement a real-money auction house alongside the traditional one. Not even Mike Morhaime knows how the system will fare once the game goes live, or how much money it’ll generate over the long term.

If there’s an irony in the slow decline of World of Warcraft, it’s that the games and game propositions that labored for years in the giant’s shadow are likely too busy dealing with other market changes to notice. The rise of freemium payment models, the advent of Facebook social gaming, and the shift to HTML5 and richer, more capable browsers have all challenged conventional notions of what an MMO should look like, what features are paramount, and how revenue is generated. Blizzard might be able to create a multi-pronged revenue stream for itself by leveraging its current franchises, but most game developers don’t have that luxury. The subscription model that sustained the traditional MMO market is likely to be restricted to the few developers and products with a brand valuable enough to command such prices, and even WoW has done some limited experimenting with the F2P concept.

Change, as they say, is the only constant. If Blizzard handles its franchises, sequels, and expansions as well as its historically done, players will benefit from the price structures and social options that emerge.

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Why Google and Android users aren’t paying any attention to the new iPad hype

Like most of you, I have been discussing thenew iPad with my technophile friends, ripping apart the news and taking a look at what the big deal is. During the course of our conversations, the overarching question that we are working to answer is “What will Google do to counter this new device with Android OS?” The largest reason for us looking for answers to that question is the inevitability of our group getting asked for our opinions by friends (and editors).

While there have been times where we have been pretty impressed with the technology that Apple has announced, this was different. While we agreed that the new screen resolution is going to be nice, there really isn’t anything game-changing that would make the tablet device a must-own. This is the same reason why Google and its Android team doesn’t care about this release, and aren’t scrambling to one-up Cupertino with some killer feature for the upcoming Jelly Bean update.

As a user of a number of Android devices, including a Galaxy Tab 10.1, the different features that Tim Cook and his team rattled off were underwhelming. I will totally concede the point that the Retina screen is a large step forward for mobile computing, but at the same time is a bit of a marketing ploy. It’s interesting that Apple made the effort to explain away the fact that the new iPad’s screen can have the Retina classification even though it only has a PPI of 264 compared to the 326 that the iPhone 4 packs into its screen. While the viewing distance math presented on stage is correct, it does still smack of marketing spin. Nevertheless, the resolution is pretty amazing for a portable device. However, nothing else that was announced made me envious in the least because they were largely inconsequential.

Take for example the dual-core A5X. While I won’t say that multi-core computing in mobile devices is a bad thing, it’s a bit humorous to me since the applications available right now don’t take full advantage of the power available. This fact isn’t something that I attribute to just iOS; Android has the same issue. Nvidia was so desperate to make money on the Tegra 2 that it had to create its own application in the Android Market so users could find the apps that were specifically written for the architecture. Don’t get me wrong, hardware advancement is a great thing, but multi-core means nothing to the average consumer except for marketing purposes. If they think there is a device that’s faster and more powerful than what they are currently using, they are going to buy it.

So, sure, the A5X has gotten a spec bump in the fact that it has a quad-core GPU that will give a performance boost, but it’s hardly a leap forward in technology. Neither is the addition of LTE connectivity — while it’s certainly a nice-to-have it’s not a show stopper. For Android users its almost become a standard feature for those on Verizon, despite the fact that it’s a vampire on battery life. Speaking of which, I am curious to see if the new iPad’s battery can last nine hours while on LTE. I am doubtful to say the least.

Wednesday’s announcement left me completely underwhelmed as a technophile and an Android user. Unlike other fans of the little green droid, I don’t want Apple to go anywhere. The relationship right now between Google and Apple is like that of the Red Sox and the Yankees. They hate each other in public, but secretly admire what the other is capable of. This causes intense competition that only benefits us as consumers. I was hoping for an amazing device that would force Google’s hand to actually take a hard look at the issues facing its mobile OS. Instead of a major hardware upgrade, Cupertino presented a hardware sidestep (at best) that is going to split the iPad brand and cause market confusion.

There’s a very specific reason why the company decided not to call it the iPad 3 and to keep the iPad 2 around for awhile. Apple couldn’t in good conscience call this device the next generation of its tablet line. This is to be admired… because it isn’t! If the new iPad had been called the iPad 3, it would have looked a lot like Samsung’s misstep with the Vibrant on T-Mobile. If you will remember, Sammy released the Vibrant on T-Mobile which people flocked to buy, only to release the Vibrant 4G less than a year later with specs that should have been present in the original version. By making the differentiation, Cook and his company avoided a consumer confidence fiasco. Keeping the iPad 2 around at a lower price will serve to keep sales brisk, as Cupertino knows that there isn’t enough reason to jump for the new device if you already own the second generation.

While the consumers will certainly flock to their local Apple retail stores to be among the first to own the new device, there really isn’t much reason to. With no major leaps forward besides an almost-Retina display that will still be playing high-def content on a 4×3 aspect ratio (hope you like those black bars), there is nothing to concern Google and its Android users. Both groups are looking ahead to the Tegra-3 armed tablets coming down the pipe from Asus and Samsung, which we hope will raise the technology bar to a higher level. Hopefully next year’s iPad release (the iPad 4? The newnew iPad?)  will bring something awesome to the table to continue to force innovation, because this new iPad certainly didn’t.

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How to use the Galaxy Nexus as a desktop replacement

Phone makers have been toying with HDMI output for the last few years, but the functionality has been limited. You might have been able to stream some video to a larger display, but controlling the device still meant touching the screen. Starting with Honeycomb on tablets, and continuing withAndroid 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), Google has started adding the features to Android for it to be a desktop replacement.

Asus has taken advantage of native mouse and keyboard support with the Transformer line of devices, and HDMI-out connectors are becoming more and more common on phones. With a few cables and some peripherals, you can run a desktop-like experience from the Android 4.0 phone that rides around in your pocket.

What you need

There are two ways to get HDMI output on your Android smartphone. Some devices have mini-HDMI ports that only require a HDMI-to-mini-HDMI cable or converter. Classic devices like the Evo 4G and almost all Motorola devices use mini-HDMI. This keeps the USB port free for external power or syncing while outputting video. These cables are also extremely cheap; on the order of a few dollars.

Other phones make use of the micro-USB port for video out through a technology called Mobile High-definition Link (MHL). This has become the more common method as it doesn’t require a second plug in the device. Because there is nothing externally different about an MHL-enabled USB port, many users don’t know their device has this capability. The HTC Sensation, Galaxy Nexus, and Galaxy S II are some of the more popular devices that use MHL. Make sure to check device specs before assuming a phone does or doesn’t support video out. MHL adapters are a bit more pricey at roughly $15. An additional standard HDMI cable is also needed, but those are a dime a dozen these days.

What makes this a useful setup is the robust mouse and keyboard support built into each and every Android 4.0 device, as well as the new on-screen buttons in Android 4.0. Almost any Bluetooth mouse and keyboard should be recognized, but some might not have quite the same level of support in software. All the standard functions should work, though.

Finally, and this is the big one, you need an Android 4.0 device. We’re using a Samsung Galaxy Nexus for testing, but you could use a tablet of some sort as well. When Ice Cream Sandwich begins to show up on more devices, many more users will have access to this functionality.

Setting up the display

Android 4.0 devices should need no configuration to get video up on a monitor or TV. Depending on the screen, you may need to tweak the video or audio settings on that equipment, though. If your device has mini-HDMI, just plug in your cable, and the video should be up. Make sure you plug the charger into the device as well to mitigate the battery drain from powering the larger display.

MHL devices like the Galaxy Nexus require you to attach the adapter, plug in the HDMI cable, and plug your power cable into the MHL adapter itself. This additional USB port is often small and unmarked, leading many users to miss it entirely. This provides power for the adapter, and the device simultaneously. The drawback to this approach is that less power is delivered to your phone, and it may actually drain the battery very, very slowly.

Image quality on a 1920×1080 panel is fairly good. The Android user interface automatically rotates, and orients itself for easier use on a large screen. The search box becomes a button, and a new voice search button is shown next to it. There is a bit more banding visible on some UI elements simply by virtue of being up-scaled to 1080p from 720p on the phone itself. If your display has built-in speakers, the HDMI carries sound as well. That’s much better than that tiny phone speaker.

Adding a keyboard and mouse

When you tether a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, Android will instantly recognize them as input devices, and integrate them into the software. You can type in any text field with the keyboard, and a mouse cursor will be available as a point-and-click device not unlike a PC. It is this step that frees you from holding onto the phone to control the interface.

Keyboard input is very snappy, and all special characters were properly detected on the phone. You can use the arrow keys to navigate around the device, and hit the enter button to open items. The escape key can be used in place of the back button in most (but not all) circumstances. Page up and down on the keyboard are also excellent for paging through the app list, web pages, or documents.

The keyboard we tested with has media controls on it, and we were delighted to find that Android understood them perfectly. Volume control and play/pause worked as intended with the default music player. Alt-Tab will work in most places to pull up a multitasking interface, but not the standard one from ICS. It will use the old Gingerbread-style grid of icons, and hitting tab repeatedly cycles through recent apps.

A mouse is an odd way to operate Android, but it’s by no means useless. The cursor has no right-click functionality, which is a little sad. It would be nice if a right-click brought up a long-press context menu where one is available. The scroll wheel works in almost all apps, with one painful exception being the new Chrome beta for Android.

Pointing and clicking are all well and good, but those times you find yourself simulating swipes with a mouse, it ends up a very unsatisfying experience. Pulling down the notification tray, swiping between screens, and swiping away apps/tabs are all places the mouse feels wrong. Dragging the mouse over to hit the on-screen system button is also a bit odd.

What is it good for?

We found web browsing with the stock browser app to be a solid experience. It works with the scroll wheel, and can use fast useragent switching to pull down the desktop version of a page. Full-screen web browsing actually feels desktop-like with the mouse paired. Clicking links in cramped areas is also much improved with a mouse. Having a cursor that can hover over page elements also lets you use desktop web pages as they were intended.

The Google Docs app was also a good experience with the keyboard attached. The font is a little too big, but it’s definitely workable. Using Gmail was also nice overall. Some of the UI elements are too big for such a large screen, but reading and responding to email is a breeze with a keyboard and mouse.

As you might expect, streaming video is great with the device tethered to a screen. There’s a bit more artifacting than you’d see on the smaller screen, but you have a cellular data connection for mobile access to streaming services. The Netflix app plays well, but since it doesn’t have landscape mode in the main app, it can be a pain to start playback.

If you have a Bluetooth gamepad, some games can also be great fun when mirrored on a bigger screen. Games like Shadowgun almost have console-quality graphics on the right hardware, and will natively support controller input. Your options are a little bit limited right now, but as ICS becomes the standard for new phones, expect more companies to put gamepads out.

You’re not going to completely replace a desktop system with this solution, but an Android phone can take over a lot of traditional computing tasks in a pinch. Word processing and web browsing are great, as is video playback. There are times when the interface just feels awkward, like when you have to swipe with a mouse click. Still, the simple fact that a phone can do all this — and withoutUbuntu for Android — is rather amazing.

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Canonical reveals Ubuntu for Android

Canonical is making good on its promise to bring its popular Ubuntu flavor of Linux to a broader range of devices by announcing Ubuntu for Android, a release that will enable a full desktop computing experience on a docked Android smartphone. More than just a virtualized app that behaves like Ubuntu, the developers have melded together the Ubuntu architecture with the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) AOSP build at the kernel level. The result is, from what we’ve seen, a harmony between the two platforms that could make a lot of sense for demanding mobile users.

To begin the introduction to Ubuntu for Android, let’s start with what Ubuntu for Android isn’t: it’s not a new mobile OS. Rather than try to enter the arena to take on Apple, Microsoft, and Google, Canonical instead chose to build a package that leverages the popularity of Android. This means Canonical is building on top of the world’s fastest growing mobile platform as a value-add. It’s a move that allows Ubuntu to augment the Android experience as opposed to attempt to replace it. This new release is best understood as a convergence between your mobile and desktop computing environments.

In an interview with Canonical CEO Jane Silber, I was able to grasp the driving idea behind Ubuntu for Android in the scheme of Canonical’s overarching vision for Ubuntu. Right now, you most likely carry a smartphone, laptop, and perhaps a tablet device of some kind. Each has a specific purpose in your day, but adds an amount of weight and time to your mobile computing. With the release of this software distribution, Canonical has unveiled that its goal is to narrow down the amount of devices that you carry to just one that will provide the same functionality of all three items mentioned above.

How it works

When you are using your Android phone that has Ubuntu installed as well, it will behave in exactly the same fashion it does now. You will have access to all the Google applications, the Market, your contacts, and the ability to make calls. So in the morning when you grab your phone to check on the emails and SMS messages that came in overnight, nothing will change there. When you arrive to your office however, your phone can become your desktop. You will simply plug the HDMI-enabled device into its dock, and you have a the full Unityexperience on your big screen.

The best part is that you won’t be walled off from the information that you were using when the device was acting like a phone. You have access to all your emails, SMSes, and contacts, as well as the ability to make and receive calls. Additionally, you will be able to do tasks like edit and display pictures, as well as view videos that you have taken with your mobile device.

This is a completely different experience than the closest comparison, Motorola’s Webtop. Your phone is literally your computer, not just acting as a browser that can interact with web applications. I was surprised when I saw the demo — the system was responsive and snappy, and lived up to the hype. However, before you rush to root your Android phone in preparation to install this software package there are some drawbacks.

The first downside is the hardware. Canonical has no plans to manufacture any kind of phone/dock combination made specifically for Ubuntu. For the development of the software the Canonical developers used the Motorola Atrix 2, but moving forward it will only be available straight from the factory — it won’t be able to be installed on existing handsets. Furthermore, Ubuntu on Android is limited to handsets with HDMI out. In addition, the hardware requirements to run this flavor of Ubuntu relegates it to the higher end of the smartphone spectrum. You will need a dual- or quad-core ARM processor with at least 512MB of memory installed. x86 was mentioned as being possible, but for the time being ARM is the focus. Realistically, Ubuntu for Android has been developed for future handsets that are going to have the horsepower to push everything the software is going to require.

The other problem is that while Canonical is pushing the build to hardware manufacturers and mobile carriers, it has no plans to release it to the general public for independent development. This means that you won’t see a CyanogenMod ROM with this functionality built into it. While Ubuntu is open source, Canonical plans to control the release of this version. It’s possible that, given the ingenuity of Android users, one day there will be a leaked build, but such a thing wouldn’t be endorsed by the company.

Those things aside, it’s hard not too like this move by Canonical. When I first heard about Ubuntu on a mobile device I was very skeptical since putting a desktop experience on such a small screen has been tried before and has failed. But the fact that this is going to give me a way to carry around a full-fledged computing experience in my pocket instead of a backpack is a win in my book.

Read more at Ubuntu — and be ready for Mobile World Congress next week, where Ubuntu for Android should be on display

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Microsoft creates mini internet to reliably test and improve Internet Explorer

With the grandiose bluster that only an aging juggernaut can pull off, Microsoft has detailed the Internet Explorer Performance Lab and its extraordinary efforts to ensure that IE9 is competitive, and that IE10 is the fastest browser in the world. Here’s a few bullet points to reel you in: 140 computers, 20,000 tests per day, over 850 metrics analyzed, and a granularity of just 100 nanoseconds.

First some background: The average Windows user spends 50% of their time in a web browser. If the web browser is slow or temperamental it reflects poorly on the underlying OS, which 90% of the time is Windows. With Windows 8, Internet Explorer will be even more important because itpowers the Metro interface and any Metro apps written in HTML and JavaScript — and, at least in the US, it looks like IE10 will be the only browser available in the Metro interface, which is where tablet users will spend most of their time.

On another front, Internet Explorer and Firefox are rapidly losing ground to Google’s Chrome, whose success has hinged almost entirely on speed. Internet Explorer 9 has started to turn the tide on Windows 7, but it’s down to IE10 to continue the upwards trend.

With this in mind, Microsoft has built a 140-computer lab that tests the performance of Internet Explorer 9 and 10 before and after each change to the codebase. According to Microsoft, this means they measure IE’s performance 200 times per day, collecting over 5.7 million measurements covering 850 discrete metrics (TCP bytes received, GPU utilization, CPU time spent rendering, etc), and 480GB of runtime data. This data is then parsed by 11 server-class machines (16 cores, 16GB of RAM), and finally stored on a big SQL server (24 logical cores, 64GB of RAM). This data is then visualized (pictured right) and analyzed to see if the latest code changes have improved or worsened performance.

The setup

What about the other 128 computers in the lab, then? Well, it turns out that Microsoft’s IE Performance Lab is basically a mini internet. The Performance Lab is a completely closed network, disconnected from both the internet and Microsoft’s intranet. The 128 computers break down into the following categories: content servers (i.e. computers hosting websites), DNS servers, network emulators, and test clients. There is network gear as well, of course.

The idea is that it’s impossible to perform reproducible, actionable testing on an open network. When you make a minute change to the codebase, you don’t want it to be hidden by a router hiccuping half way around the world. The Performance Lab’s tools are accurate to within 100 nanoseconds — 0.0001 milliseconds — and so the tiniest of hiccups is enough to ruin a test. This is why the lab includes every piece of hardware and software that a “normal” internet would have.

The vast majority of the computers are test clients, which are broken down into high-, mid-, and low-range devices, spanning everything from 64-bit desktops, to Atom-powered netbooks, to ARM tablets. The DNS servers are simply DNS servers. The network emulators, however, are interesting. Basically, the Performance Lab has no variation at all. This is by design, and ensures that test results are actionable; if you run the same test on the same hardware, the result will be the same. Obviously the internet isn’t actually like this — and that’s where the network emulators come in. Network emulators can be tuned to inject conditions that real-world users might experience, such as latency and packet loss. Network emulators are, in effect, “the internet” portion of the Performance Lab.

If you thought Microsoft’s attention to detail was fairly impressive, there’s more! Before every test, each and every computer receives a fresh install of Windows (Vista, 7, or 8). If a test fails for whatever reason (a bad code push), Windows is reinstalled. Furthermore, if a piece of hardware fails, the entire computer is thrown out. Apparently, newer hardware is faster than older hardware — so replacing a broken stick of RAM with a new stick can throw off the entire test. When you are working at a granularity of 100 nanoseconds, every little detail counts.

The test

In essence, a Performance Lab engineer tweaks the testing scenario — the content delivered by the web servers, the latency on the network emulators, the local settings of Internet Explorer — and then simply presses a big red button, which triggers the installation of Windows on a test computer, and then hours of repeated web page fetching. As mentioned before, a total of 850 metrics are captured, each one measuring one of four benchmark categories: Loading content (from pressing enter to finishing rendering); interactive web apps (clicking through interactive, JavaScript elements on a page); synthetic benchmarks (SunSpider et al); and the application itself (is the “File” menu more or less responsive, does “Print” still work, and so on).

At the end, data is funneled back to the analysis and SQL servers for inspection.

A complete test cycle is a lot more complicated than this, but fortunately Microsoft has provided a flow chart of the process.

It’s all a bit over the top

To be honest, the Performance Lab feels slightly over-compensatory. I mean, Internet Explorer 9 is certainly fast, and IE10 will undoubtedly be very fast as well… but there’s more to web browsing than raw performance. By the numbers, Firefox is as fast as IE9 or Chrome, and yet it doesn’t feel as fast. Likewise, IE9 is theoretically very fast, but you have to remember that it doesn’t have add-ons, sync, or many other features found in Chrome or Firefox.

Just like when Microsoft turned to calculus to defend its murder of the Start Menu, the Performance Lab feels like the digital equivalent of Steve Ballmer breathlessly chanting developers, developers, developers; it’s impressive, and even a little bit scary, but not actually all that effective.

Another big question is whether Mozilla and Google employ the same testing methods. We know that Mozilla does performance testing of add-ons, but as far as we know they rely on Test Pilot for the browser itself. Google probably has a similar setup to Microsoft. We’ve reached out to Google and will update this story when (or if) it replies.

Read more at Building Windows 8 or watch a video about the Performance Lab

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