Once considered the go-to phone for the business elite, today BlackBerry struggles to stay above water in a marketplace dominated by iOS and Android operating systems. Three years ago, Research in Motion (RIM) held 50 percent of the smartphone market in the US; in September of 2011 there were eighty million worldwide subscribers to BlackBerry, and 200 million shipped smartphones. But with no newly released device in over a year, BlackBerry now holds less than 5 percent of the smartphone market. Corporate giants have been stepping away from using BlackBerry devices, giving the exodus heft and volume. Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s CEO, told Fortune that her company is one of them, moving “from BlackBerries to smartphones.“ “One of the really important things for Yahoo’s strategy moving forward is mobile,” Mayer told the magazine. “So it was really important that our engineers, our salespeople, really everyone throughout our whole organization really understand Android, iPhones, and, you know, Windows 8 and really get a sense of what’s happening there and how to create an amazing experience… so we decided we wanted to get everyone upgraded to smartphones.” Goldman Sachs employees were given the option to use iPhones in fall 2012. The White House, which previously used the BlackBerry for security reasons, recently started supporting the iPhone (President Obama reportedly uses his iPad during cabinet meetings). BlackBerry’s popularity has been dropping considerably, even the most loyal users are either thinking about replacing their devices, or are already carrying two devices, the secondary one being an iPhone or an Android. CIO writer Al Sacco wrote a thoughtful piece that sums up the current situation in an ingenuous manner: users love their BlackBerry devices for the keyboard, notification systems and messaging capabilities, but at the same time they are very...

Whoever said that practical toys couldn’t be fun had never heard of SmartThings. Tenants will soon have access to an undeniably practical, incredibly fun, and potentially life- and money-saving set of devices. Before the ink on the business plan has dried, the product has already taken off, blazing a trail in home automation that is bright and promising. Thousands are anxiously awaiting the arrival of their SmartThings starter kit. SmartThings, a breakthrough technology company, has a simple goal to “add intelligence to everyday things.” From this humble approach, CTO Jeff Hagins and his staff of 25 reimagined ordinary operations within the home. By rethinking the connection between a device and the intelligence needed to control it, SmartThings has created a wireless network that can help tenants monitor and operate endless facets of their homes with a smartphone or tablet. According to a Kickstarter survey, potential users are most enthusiastic about SmartThings impact on DIY home security. Residents want an easier way to monitor their homes. They want to know who is at the front door long before they reach the foyer. They want to ensure that the Christmas lights aren’t burning down the house while they are away at a party. They want to enjoy their vacations without worrying about a burst pipe and flooded basement. SmartThings’ series of wireless devices such as low-resolution, cloud-controlled cameras, temperature and moisture sensors address those concerns and more. While SmartThings can be used to mitigate major home catastrophes, the simple daily functions are also impressive. By attaching a contact sensor to a closet door, a sister knows precisely when her younger sibling is attempting to make off with some “borrowed” clothing.  A motion sensor alerts a mother when her sleepwalking child has left his bedroom; Lumawake can...

It’s the time of year to make resolutions, and Steven Rea of Roscoe Properties tells us that the Austin, Texas property management firm has set some ambitious property management technology goals for 2013. “This is still very much an analog business,” observes Rea, who has been in the industry for ten years and worked his way up to Vice President of Administration after starting at Roscoe as a site level property manager. “My goal for our company, and a way our company set itself apart, is as a digital company in an analog world.” With that goal in mind, Rea and Roscoe Properties owner Jason Berkowitz are using technology best practices to make the properties they manage operate efficiently, for their employees and residents alike. Two of their goals for the year are ambitious by industry norms, but attainable given the progress they’ve pushed forward so far. “I want to be able to say that we have 95 percent of our residents pay electronically and we have a 100 percent paperless office by January 2014,” Rea said confidently. Currently, 65 percent of the Roscoe portfolio submits monthly rents electronically; up from 10 percent two years ago, with some portfolios the company manages boasting over 80 percent electronic remissions. In January 2013, Roscoe Properties will manage 3,000 rental units, the majority in Austin, with 700 units in San Antonio. “I’ve got my accounting department almost paperless, just making use of the technologies we already have. It used to be that accounting departments would have file cabinets and banker boxes full of invoices. We still have those file cabinets, but they’re all empty,” Rea said. A last remaining barrier to an all-digital office has been the historic need for paper records. Though Roscoe now rarely executes...

In an effort to grab a larger piece of the online networking market dominated by Facebook and LinkedIn, Google has added a new feature to Google+ that will help people connect and build virtual relationships. It’s called Google+ Communities, and the marketing spin is that it will add substance and coherence to online interaction, with networks based on users’ shared interests and passions. New data asserts that Google+ is gaining ground on the social networking market, to which it arrived late, but it still lags well behind “the Facebook”. According to the company’s own numbers, more than 500 million people have upgraded to Google+, and 235 million are engaged and using the service (+1’ing apps in Google Play, hanging out in Gmail, connecting with friends in Search). Facebook, meanwhile, has over 1 billion active users a month, according to a late 2012 status update from founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Google+ has won over many users with its privacy settings that actually work and are super easy-to-use, and Facebook hasn’t done itself any favors with recent newsfeed advertising changes and targeted ads based on users’ profile information.  Google+ Communities attempts to offer even more freedom to users; you can engage in specific conversations with people who share your hobbies, from photography to traveling to poker nights; plan events; start hangouts, and share with your communities from across the web. You can do it all from your Google+ home screen, you don’t have to visit the community in order to post. You choose whether you want to be notified by e-mail on each new post by other community members, filter posts by topics or sub-categories, share pics, videos or links and add events. Photos are a bit bigger than you’d see on Facebook and the...

Canceling credit cards and getting a new drivers license after an “old-fashioned” wallet is lost or stolen is no picnic. But what if you lost your wallet with $900 inside, plus your address book, your bank passwords, access to your email and social media accounts? That’s what it is like when you lose your smartphone or have it stolen. No wonder that these days travelers worry more about losing their phone than their wedding ring, according to a recent Intel survey. Around 60 million smartphones and cellphones are lost, stolen or damaged each year, according to Asurion, an insurance cellphone provider. A replacement could cost you as much as $850 for the device alone if your loss is a top-of-the-line iPhone and you aren’t eligible for an upgrade in the near future. While your phone is still in your possession, keep these in mind: Password-protect it. This is the easiest and most secure way to keep your device private. Don’t be too lazy to enter your password every time you need to access your phone; you will be sorry afterwards for not taking this measure. Sign up for a “Find my Phone” service. All new smartphones come with the “find my phone” app that tracks your device, regardless of the carrier or insurance. Check your phone for this app and activate it. Go as far as to install extra security apps – Prey (iOS, Android, Linux, OSX, Windows), Lookout (iOS, Android), etc. iCloud: Erase your device remotely (for iOS and OS X devices) The safest way to protect the data you have on your phone, from contacts to electronic banking software, is to revoke access to the device by remotely locking or wiping it. Make sure you’ve been using the iCloud Backup or had...

Back in 2010, the blogosphere discovered and publicized a hidden feature in Windows 7 it coined “God Mode”.  It appears this feature had existed long before Windows 7.  I often see tech tips, for Windows or otherwise, with limited value or that are unique to solving rare OS issues.  This feature doesn’t expose any new feature in Windows, but does provide incredible utility by providing access to all your Windows customization settings in one convenient folder, presented in a well-organized fashion.  No more frustrating perusing of Windows help forums or calling your tech-savvy friends in an attempt to find that hard-to-find Windows setting. I’m late to the party on discovery of this feature, as it was widely published back in 2010.  Checking with colleagues in the tech field, none of them had seen this before.  Perhaps you missed it, too.  With that in mind, here’s how, in a matter of seconds, to create your God Mode folder.  For those IT professionals concerned about a feature termed “God Mode”, there is no new Windows features or settings exposed through this trick, other than the trick itself.  It is harmless but incredibly useful. Here we go: 1)  Right click on your Desktop 2) Create a New Folder 3)  Rename the folder:  GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} 4)  The folder icon will now change:                   5)  Double click the new folder.  Enjoy. It appears this works with Windows 8 as well. Get more details in a CNET instructional video. Ina Fried, the author of the CNET article, had an exclusive interview with Steven Sinofsky, the President of Windows at Microsoft until last month.  In that conversation, Sinofsky divulged that many more GUID shortcuts exist in Windows.  We’ll leave you to discover those yourself. ...

The ‘YotaPhone’, a two-sided smartphone out of Russia, has been a topic of much tech chatter for the past few days. Industry buzz calls the development a surprise, as Russian technology developers have thus far kept a low profile in the mobile phone market. Will they profoundly impact our next generation of smartphones? With this new product, CEO Vladislav Martynov is trying to make an entrance and change the smartphone landscape via innovation, something he thinks has been missing from the market recently. Think your iPhone is boring? He agrees. Fighting back is event in the prototype phone design, which has a unique dual-screen, with one screen on each side of the device. The front of the phone has the traditional LCD screen and the back has an electronic-paper display (E-Ink) that’s black and white. This combination of screens supposedly offers a longer battery life (+50%) by dividing different information on each of them – the frontal one will allow working with apps, texts and calls, while the E-Ink side is designed for reading news and books, for reminders and calendar appointments, missed calls and other notifications. The electronic-paper side would be easier to read in sunlight, but would hardly affect the phone’s 2,100 mAh battery. Martynov believes that the prototype will be a success, commenting: “two years ago we were not so dependent on all the kinds of information we consume now, from Facebook and Twitter to news and other RSS feeds. The smartphone is now a window onto this virtual life, but today there’s a lot of disappointment when you miss information. Our electronic paper display with our applications will remove this irritation.” (BBC) Early reviews say there are some limitations to the E-Ink screen – it doesn’t accept touch input, relying...

Just in time for the holiday rush, Google brings shoppers, travelers and those who find themselves looking for an exit new access to indoor maps.  The new service offers over 10,000 indoor layouts for malls, stores, museums, casinos, and airports from different parts of the world. The technology powerhouse is late to the indoor map market but brings volume and global reach –  Microsoft’s Bing Maps has launched indoor maps in 2010 with 3,100 maps. Currently the Google indoor map service is available in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Sweden, and Switzerland. Navigating on Google Indoor Maps follows the same paths as exploring Google Maps. The steps to follow are simple: Find an available Indoor Maps location. Zoom into the map until you start to see an indoor floor plan of the building. Use the level switcher to move from the ground floor to other available floors in the building. Searching works exactly as it does in the rest of Google maps for mobile, but the search results for Indoor Maps will only show when you’re fully zoomed into a building where an indoor map is available. The Android Latitude feature is seamlessly integrated with the indoor maps as well, thus allowing you to find your friends and children with a few simple touches of your mobile phone. The service will expand with user uploads of  building plans online. If you want to see your residential, commercial or retail property on the service, uploading is available in the US, UK, and Japan. Google is also starting to collect indoor images similar to Street View. The images will augment the floor plans and give you a look inside buildings around the world from your tablet, laptop or mobile device....

The holiday season is official upon us. Whether you’re traveling near or far to visit friends and family this year, there are dozens of smartphone apps you can download to help you get where you’re going – and help you navigate a new city once you get there. Here are a few recommended apps to download before you hit the road – or fly the friendly skies: Kayak:  An excellent all around app from a website that’s been around for almost a decade now.  Search for last minute flights, hotels, car rentals. (iOS or Android) The nice thing about Kayak is that you can also search travel site competitors including Expedia, Priceline, Hotwire, and Hotels.com. Hipmunk: Similar to Kayak, you can search for hotels and flights but an added convenience is the way they present the data in an organized timeline so it’s easy to read and compare with your schedule. Plus, once you choose your ideal travel itinerary, it easily integrates with Google calendar so you have it on the go. (iOS or Android) The Weather Channel: Unlike the free weather app that may have come on your phone, The Weather Channel app provides detailed 10 day forecasts. With ultra-local forcasts and animated radar, it’s an excellent free upgrade option. (iOS or Android)   Road Ninja: In need of fuel for your car or your family? Download Road Ninja (iOS or Android) to see what’s coming up on the next exits. (iOS or Android)   HopStop:  If you’re in the city this week and using public transportation for your travel needs then HopStop is your one stop shop. With information from more than 62 major cities, it’s a complete guide to public transportation, walking directions, taxis, and car rentals.  (iOS or Android) There are endless...

“Virtualization”  is one of the hottest buzzwords in the IT world today.  Virtualizing servers has become a common practice in most large IT shops.  We have recently seen the introduction of virtualization with graphics processing cards (GPUs)  And of special interest to executives and IT professionals exploring Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) for their business, smart phone virtualization may present a solution to security and privacy concerns. Even without the intentional practice of BYOD, the flood of personal smart phones and tablets entering the workplace raises many questions about security.  Today’s workers demand the flexibility to work not just from employer-provided desktops or laptops, but from personal smart phones and tablets. As these devices encourage out-of-office connectivity, productivity and responsiveness, most companies are loath to discourage such behavior. But when personal devices are used to access corporate email, applications and data, both the personal privacy demands of the user and the enterprise’s security and control requirements are simultaneously in need of control points and protection measures.  The same goes for company provided consumer devices, which end up being used not only for business, but the inevitable access of personal email, data and media. So how to build a wall between the personal and corporate worlds, even when using just one device? Virtualization may hold the key. One of the industry leaders in virtualization, VMWare, has recently unveiled their  “MVP” (Mobile Virtualization Platform)  that will allow a company to introduce iOS and Android devices securely into the enterprise.  The access is controlled via a separate workspace on the mobile device that is entirely controlled by the company.  Essentially, personal and business applications and usage are separated. The user of a mobile device MVP-enabled now has 2 personas:  Personal and business.  The user can toggle between...

Make your workspace brighter, better and more productive. Design an office space that fosters productivity, encourages creativity, and promotes the health and well being of all who enter. This holistic approach to an otherwise function-driven space could be the change that you need to breathe fresh air into your business and boost the morale of your team. Create the right frame of mind Your office is more than a space for meeting clients and handling paperwork. It is the environment in which you and your staff live for a significant portion of the day.  Create a space that feels livable without detracting from your professional goals. Integrating biophilic concepts into work places has proven to increase employee productivity, happiness, and health. Of course, that isn’t as easy when operating in an existing property. Retrofit the office from the inside out with a nature-inspired makeover. Create a fun, organic space like the Open AD office green house by replacing faux plants with their real equivalents. Opt for energy efficient, low-e windows with insulation instead of window coverings. By removing window coverings and permitting natural light to enter, workers can thrive in a more natural feeling and dynamic environment. In urban settings, accomplish a similar look and feel on a smaller scale using Domsai. Each mini-greenhouse is compact, easy to maintain, and adds a fresh, airy feel to your office. Optimize available natural light while conserving a bit of privacy with transparent or translucent room dividers. Opt for organic curves for a more natural effect. Create a healthier work environment with Grabo Acoustic Flooring. The flooring’s primary function, noise control, still sits center stage. As an added bonus, the flooring offers antistatic and bacteria resistant properties for a healthier workplace. Lighting doesn’t have to be purely...

SaneBox has itself a catchy name. More importantly it has an effective solution to the burgeoning problem of inbox overload: automatic management, effortless prioritizing, and a robust schedule of tools to improve convenience and functionality. If you have a high-volume inbox or multiple email accounts and not enough hours in the day to tend to them, this could be the answer. So… are emails driving you nuts? How it works appears very simple, but some heavy-duty A.I. processing take place under the hood. SaneBox is a cloud application and compatible with any IMAP-based email service. To get started all you have to do is enter your email address and click the permission button: SaneBox squirrels into your inbox and begins organizing the ambient chaos into a more efficient arrangement. Several algorithms are used, with sender-recipient volume and subject line content the most heavily-weighted. Is this just a fancy tool to sort spam? Not by a long shot. The first thing you’ll notice is that SaneBox outputs your email into prioritized folders. Your main box receives the most important emails, less important ones are shunted into a SaneLater folder, older items go into SaneArchive. You can juggle items from one folder to another to help the application learn what goes where. Here’s a video showing SaneBox in action: SaneBox delivers a very robust service, so effective in fact that it takes a little getting used to. It learns exceptionally quickly, particularly if you take a moment to correct the (very few) mistakes it makes in the first 48 hours. You can help steepen the learning curve: link SaneBox to your social media accounts and it does its job faster, more accurately, and objectively better. SaneBox also offers several other features that expand its utility. The...

If you think you aren’t utilizing a cloud computing solution, think again. There are clouds everywhere. In fact, they are so ubiquitous that we may not realize we are using them nearly constantly as we navigate our professional and personal lives. Just like A.A. Milne’s Eeyore with his little gray cloud always following him around over his head, the cloud that houses our digital data is ever-present today, even if you haven’t set up your own personal cloud or have yet to transfer your business data to a cloud-based solution. But it turns out that plenty of people still don’t understand what cloud computing is all about, and may not want to admit it. If this is you, read on. Here’s what you don’t know about the cloud. 1. Despite the fact that we just used that really cute Winnie the Pooh analogy, cloud computing has nothing to do with clouds in the sky at all. It’s a term referring to software and data that’s hosted on a remote server network,  and accessible by you or your employees without requiring a direct wired connection to that information.  Where did the term cloud come from? “IT professionals have used a cloud icon while drafting network diagrams forever to symbolize the Internet,” explains James Beane, Manager of Cloud Services for Yardi Systems.  “Eventually organizations starting taking data out of the local environment and putting it into ‘The Cloud.'” 2. If you use web-based email, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or YouTube, photo sites like Flickr, Tumblr or Instagram, software hosting services, or just about any computer service that utilizes the Internet in some way, you are uploading data onto clouds all day long – you just don’t think about it. Where do you think...

The saying that if it bleeds it leads has been around for ages, but with TV stations and various news channels competing with the internet for attention it now seems that there’s less emphasis on fact and more emphasis on first to run. Rushed stories are reported as news without taking the necessary time to check sources and ensure that, in the best interest of the audience, the information is factual. One such example occurred last night when news outlets everywhere reported that Facebook had released a new membership price grid and that to avoid paying for membership you simply needed to share a message with your friends, otherwise you would be forced to pay the next time you logged in. This was a hoax and you can read all about it on Mashable. This was very easy to decipher as false and further brings into question the credibility of news outlets to report accurate information. If this hoax was reported as actual news what else slips through?  Is every news channel going to go the way of Huffington Post: report it now and ask for forgiveness and editorial changes later? One final item to consider is that with the rush to get all these stories out as quickly as possible, it does become increasingly challenging to decipher between fact and fiction.  Something mentioned every other day in the news is Facebook privacy settings. With Facebook currently at 1 billion plus users, the quantity of information at the fingertips of Mark Zuckerburg and his board is astounding, so here are a few facts you should know. Here’s four Facebook “did you know’s”: 1. There was a report a few weeks ago claiming if you choose to make a post only visible to “friends” but one...

Ever wondered what happens after you close your browser and end yet another session online? Have you ever felt like you’re being watched – and maybe even gossiped about – by those persistent tracking cookie monsters as you blaze a trail via your browser? If you ask yourself why anyone would care about your interests and what happens to the zillions of pieces of search data generated daily, the answer is simple: information is power. Our personal data is the most valuable asset class of the 21st century. Cookies are not the only way our activities are monitored. Every online action is stored in cyberspace, regardless of the device used, be it PC, laptop, or cellphone. Every transaction is a little piece of puzzle that will generate our consumer profile. Being smart about protecting this data is our new personal challenge – and a far more complicated task than stashing physical valuables and personal paperwork in a safe deposit box. Companies have already started the race to cash in. Azigo, Mydex, The DataBanker, and Personal.com are offering a cloud-based hub that allows users to safely store and/or remove their personal digital information from everything from medical records to music and financial reports. For many users, the biggest complaint about the online environment today is privacy concerns. But we still manage to be pleasantly amazed by search engines that “read our minds,” returning suggestions extremely close to what we’re looking for after typing in just a few letters. (These “miracles” are made possible through browsing history and cache. This data is now available across all devices, so it follows you from phone to laptop to tablet, as long as you’re signed in to your Google or Apple account.) Another common complaint is the stream of...

The world is not flat. So why settle for a map without topography, ever? Bringing 3D maps to mobile has been a race between Google and Apple, with Google sprinting over the finish line with Google Earth 3D for the iOS platform last month. The Google Earth app is compatible with the latest Apple devices – iPhone 4S, iPod touch, and 2nd & 3rd generation iPads. Apple has yet to offer its own comparable feature. Users on older device models can use the maps if they’re running iOS 4.3 or later. Through the 7.0.0 version, Google reveals to iOS users what Android devotees have been seeing since June of this year. Here’s a video that demos the product for Android: 14 major regions are already converted to Google’s 3D imagery: Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area (including the Peninsula and East Bay), Boston, Boulder, Charlotte, Lawrence (Kansas), Long Beach (Calif.), Portland, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Tampa, Tucson, and Rome (Italy). By the end of the year there’s a promise to add more cities worldwide. It’s a complex, high-tech process to build these maps, entailing strategic fly-overs of metropolitan areas with camera-equipped planes that flew in tight circles to get shots at 45 degree angles. Back on the ground, the high-resolution imagery and local geometry are put back together, creating 3D tiles that can be viewed from any angle. Virtual tours are no novelty these days, but Google, as always, is aiming for innovation. Over 11,000 virtual tours of popular sites in over 110 countries and regions can be revealed swiping the tab located at the bottom of the main Google Earth screen. These pre-created tours will dynamically be updated with interesting locations in thumbnail size for a broader palette to choose from in the...

While it is true that Google Fiber contains no vitamin D or riboflavin and in no way contributes to a healthy diet, it does promise some fun prizes in the bottom of the box: 1000mB/second = 100x faster that average Internet speeds Hundreds of channels, plus NetFlix, Hulu, YouTube all in one place Optimized HD clarity Record 8 programs simultaneously on 8TB storage space Here is Google’s hipster-tisement for the service, which will have you singing “Just What I Needed” for the rest of the day: Pricing is divided into three tiers. Broadband-only service is free (see below); 1Gbps  service is $70/month; 1Gbps + television is offered at $120/month. A further $300 “construction fee” for the Internet and television services is waived if you sign a contract (broadband-only customers have to pay). The television service comes with a Nexus 7 tablet that also acts as a remote control. And now for the bad news: you can’t have Google Fiber… yet. Bringing in fiber requires a hefty infrastructure upgrade so Google is rolling things out slowly and only to communities that express the highest level of interest. Kansas City is ground zero for the nation’s first “fiberhoods” and pre-registration ending Sept. 9 will determine which areas in the city are first to receive the new service. As for everyone else, well, we could be a while away but once the trial run in KC gets underway in earnest, you can expect pre-registration to open in additional cities. The big idea here is less about the technical specs – the average Internet user doesn’t need and might not even notice 100x faster service – and more about Google’s bid to dominate modern media. Google has pacted with Rovi to license its media technology to power its...

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro quad core tablet is close to consumer release, a moment much awaited by developers interested in making apps and games for the S4 Pro platform. Early reviewers report that they are impressed by the speed,  performance  and graphic capabilities of the SoC tablet and anticipate it breaking to the front of the Android pack. Here’s a look at the features: SoC stands for System-on-Chip devices that hold the electronics for a complete, working product on a single chip. Imagine the microprocessor, the digital signal processor (DSP), RAM and ROM, and graphics processor, all on a small chip with an ancillary reduction in power. The result is tremendous speed and mobility. In August of last year, Qualcomm was introducing the Snapdragon classification of its chips and mobile solutions, ranked after the processor’s power in S1, S2, S3, and S4 classes. To simplify things, the company presented afterwards four secondary versions for the superior class S4: Prime, Pro, Plus, and Play. The top version S4 Prime is meant for smart TVs and home theater systems, but the following version, S4 Pro, is the one that made it to the tablets and ultraportable ARM, a bit more appealing to the public. It is loaded with goodies and gadgets, including: 4 Asynchronous Quad CPU cores running at up to 1.5GHz; Adreno 320 GPU; 10.1 inch display running a 1366 x 768 resolution; 13 Megapixel Camera with Flash; 1080p HD video and playback; 7 microphones; 2GB of RAM and 32GB of inbuilt storage running on Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich; Android 4.0 ICS; 5200 mAh battery; Charging dock with two USB 2.0 ports, port for HDMI and Ethernet. The APQ8064 CPU, named Asynchronous Symmetric Multiprocessing or SMP, has the ability to be clocked at different...