Apps make your life perfect

 

There are so many apps today I think everything has been done. It looks like I have got an app for everything just a fingertip away. The apps are so easy to use, no wonder there are so popular.

 

Originally the app service was offered for general productivity tools and to get information quickly. Such as a calendar, stock market and weather broadcast apps. that where free and some useful pay for tools also.  I agree it’s great if you own a business focused on creative design of software. But If I’d had a Nail Saloon – for instance – and I wanted to be on the map, now I would need to create an app for that.

Now Microsoft has 160,000 apps, Google has 800,000 apps and Apple has 1,250,000 apps - according to Forbes. However app explosion still does not help get things done for you, these apps only provide only a short term reminders, and a short term time to play with something new. And the question is, How do you ever find a good app. in the app stores now that there are millions of them?   

Do we need them all of them? How did they change our behavior so far? Recently I’ve realized I can’t have a nice chat with my friends without being interrupted – ‘Hang on, while I check my phone!’ And how will it affect my life? I mean, do I become lazy? It is nice to check out what the current time is on the other side of the world. Ok, I need it. But why can’t I do the math in my head?

And what about the future? There is an app that tells me I have 37% chance to get pregnant today. Hmm…. Is there any apps which is tell me if my husband will be around tonight?

 

Ignorance of Decades

 

I always wondered when science will reach the point when humans no longer understand what’s going on. I’m not talking about ‘how things work’ question. For instance, Edison gave us electricity and Bell gave us the telephone. We didn’t know how they worked but we knew how to use them.  So why doesn’t this idea work with cloud computing too? It’s always interesting to see how we adopted new things in our life with or without any knowledge of it.

 

SMBs in the cloud

More and more small and medium-sized companies are using cloud-based services, but usually only apply these ideas in fundamental processes. Companies often organize email or share documents, but only 5 percent of them actually say that SMBs are cloud base.  

 

The latest Microsoft’s survey results show what services are use in cloud.  The most common home electronic service - mail is the most common (57%), but also popular is sharing of documents (42%), instant messaging, VoIP (31-31%) and cloud storage at (23%) as well.  Only (9%) of Internet office suites - such as Office 365 or GoogleDocs - make use of the cloud services.

 

 

 

Not so long ago, a company became a pioneer of the industry when they took advantage of the cloud. Over the past 12 months – according to Microsoft’s report - Office 365 services have tripled annual revenue. But the fact is that almost all SMBs companies have internet access, yet they don’t know they have been using the cloud.

Funny if you think about it. In the old days – we didn’t turn on the lights and say "I’m not using electricity", So today why do we say – "I don’t use the  cloud"  although I'm on the internet. Can we use ignorance as an excuse?

Who’s to blame?

 

Future? Unemployment? Pictures? Cloud? How does all this things come together? 

Do you want to find a job? It’s not easy these days. Do you use social network?  Since we post a bunch of pictures of our moments in life and what we want to share with our friends. But how is this activity affecting our future? Can the cloud be blamed for that? Nope. The answer is the users and their bad habits...and of course this requires knowledge of the cloud.

Reckless (Thoughtless) Youth

 Eric E. Schmidt - served as the CEO of Google until 2011 – He drew younger generation’s attention to the danger of posting pictures on Facebook. He warned them not to share too many personal events of themselves. He said –that the older generation made their mistakes, but there mistakes didn’t stay on the internet too long, so it was easy to move on. Teens today might say- who cares? It’s yesterday news now…Well that’s not quite true anymore!

Behind the scenes

To store our pictures on the cloud is fast and simple. It happens in real time and we enjoy this fact. But do we know what happens behind the scenes?

 

 

When you take that picture and posted on your social media site many copies have been made to be available to your friends. So it means your picture landed on many computers any many data warehouses which can be uploaded in anytime. And these computers are all connected together. So it means that your picture gets replicated many different times just to get shared. From that one photo your social sites make many copy to ensure that it gets shared. That’s called the reliability of cloud. As you know, it needs to be reliable.. There when you want it.

Do you feel the danger yet?

Expectations and letdowns

 June is here, summer is late. It’s cold so I turned the heating on, while I wait for the warm weather. Sunny days should be come soon although weather forecast said we have to wait for a while. Things have not turned out the way we expected and we are upset.  I can honestly say this is the way I feel with the latest version of Android 5.0 so far.

At the Google I/O event ‘the big thing’ hasn’t come forth yet. Of course I’m talking about Key Lime Pie.  What happened? Well, since it’s a developer event they focused on developers quite a bit.

Google opened the event with a giants three hour long keynote where the company announced lots of new stuff and gave many letdowns too. No KLP on the phone side, no Nexus  7 on the tablet side. What they did have is a new streaming music service, and a unified chat service. They also tried to optimize the use of Google glass and they focused more on Chrome this time. What else? An update to Google Maps. Yes, this is in Hungary as well.

So no announcement of  a new version of Android but Google said it’s coming later this year. Just like our summer right? I guess not much to do only look forward too just bunch of promises.  Let’s put it that way G-team must be working on something great so better wait for it patiently. It might worth it.

But I have Hungarian news for you! Mark Zuckerberg spent a day in Budapest. Wow! He liked the city and the people, the only thing is that he was cold too.

Big hopes -- sweet treats

As far the big hopes and this coming weeks can be summed up by look forward to the Google announcement at Google IO event, which will take place 15 May to 17 in San Francisco.  

 

What will happen? Well - Hopefully we will hear more about their latest sweets - Key Lime Pie – which is the dessert-related codename for Android 5.0. It follows Jelly Bean, Honeycomb, Donut and the first Android version from 2008 which was codenamed Cupcake.

May I note here that - while we wait for KLP- in the Hungarian market Jelly Bean - just became available on a few devices -  Those Hungarians who have decided to start with Android 5.0 better save up some money and buy some luxury brand from Samsung, such as the Galaxy or Nexus 4. And of course wait patiently while it comes to Hungary.

Sync

Now guesses are taking place what we can expect from Key Lime Pie, since Google has not released an official statement. So all we know is based on rumors. Since everything is on your phone these days, how nice it would be if Cloud back up would be built into Key Lime Pie? Google’s rivals such as Amazon and Microsoft already offer their high quality cloud service integration. Will Google launch a cloud services platform at its annual developer conference? I think we need a solution where everything is automatically saved on a Google IDrive...I mean Apple has its iCloud right?

Security

What about more device management security? Will we see more security in Android 5.0, at last? Well, looking around a bit what other users wishful thought might be and what Google would considered in a first place.

Other things to watch for are, new performance profiles, integrated social networking, multi-device support and built.in video chat. And some wishes go to manufacturers as well, such as a great camera – not too many pixels but high quality and– at least it should work.

Ohh!!..and one more thing! Can we proud to hold our new phones, please? Many of us are tired of the cheap feeling plastic devices…

Google street view is in Hungary!

 Google Street View first launched in 2007 in Los Angeles now Hungary has been added to the long list of counties in Europe which are featured on street view. Google Maps can now take you 'virtually' through the streets of Budapest. But at this point I need to stop and share my thought about Budapest.

Budapest is the most beautiful city in Europe! It isn’t just the capital of Hungary which has been located in the middle of the country but more than that it is also heart of Europe as well.

 

Danube, one of the largest rivers in Europe, flows between the two parts of the city. The east side called Pest, is a rapidly growing modern city while Buda the west side is on the highlands. Buda’s is the old castle’s districts which became a UNESCO World Heritage Committee site.

Yes, we are surrounded by treasures!

Tourists think about Budapest based on our famous tourist spot such as the Gellért Hill with our Statue of Liberty and the Citadel, and the Castle of Buda.

 

 

 

What about Pest side? You can visit the House of Parliament, the famous Andrássy Avenue and Heroes Square or St. Stephen's Basilica and Vajdahunyad Castle and many great parks too.

 

What do we as Hungarians think about Budapest? 

For us we think that the Millennium underground is still part of Budapest's transport system, but did you know that it was the first underground in the continent of Europe?

Do you know the legend of the stone Lions who guard the chain bridge on either side of Buda, and Pest? The historical fact is that in 1842 Pest and Buda was connected together but, a fun fact is that what most Hungarians want to know is whether the Lions have got tongues*? And What about the shoes on the Danube’s embankment?

 

Hungary has lots of great history, and lot’s of great things you can find here, from the latest supermarket to a thousands of years Roman ruins. So if you have no plan for your summer vacation, come to Budapest.

Visit the most amazing city ever!

 

 

*I think they do have tongues :), but this can stay a Hungarian disagreement forever!

Personal Cloud

 

Personal or Private Cloud?

Good question!  As far as my personal devices of organization concerns... it is personal cloud.

Just as many of you -  these days - I use all my new devices as well, but tell you the truth I find difficult to synchronize them or it takes time think it over where should I look for what I need. Is it on my laptop, or my desktop, or my tablet? What about my latest music downloads? And I haven’t mentioned my photos yet. Until now my best option was to email my stuff to myself and use my USB driver to bring data from one to the other.  Therefore I’d rather look for some secure and reliable option …with lots of flexibility of course.

The good news is that many companies are already offering web-based data center services. Which means you keep your files in one place also share your files with your friends no matter its location.

This kind of services has been around for a while, but the idea about collecting it together in one user experience is relatively new, this new idea is Personal Cloud. The challenge is to make sure that your Personal Cloud integrates to all the services you care about such as Microsoft App, Mac icloud, or Android devices and apps.

Market leaders such as Amazon Cloud Drive or Microsoft Sky Driver are great cloud services, but they are based their own cloud services, and you still need to use a browser most of the time to use these services. Google Drive is a newer provider that also provides storage, and cloud based apps. Apple iCloud meanwhile is only a media storage service and the final one to mention would be DropBox which seems to be a great solution and can providers great offline access to files.

The only piece missing is a way to get to all these services, easily.

Now there are guides that help you become better at setting up your own personal cloud such as Lifehack How to set up your own private cloud storage service in five minutes with owncloud. Basic idea is use owncloud.org or a something new like the start up zeropc.com to collect all the cloud services into one cloud capability. This is a great way to start to take advantage of the ideas of a personal cloud. Clever.

 

zeropc.com	owncloud.org