Greg – Page 29 – JumbleCat

Bell’s Data Grab

October 22, 2013October 22, 2013 Greg

[sc:internet-category ]Over on Michael Geist’s blog there’s an article on a change Bell Canada is going to be making in its data collection policy in November.

I use Bell for my TV and Cell Phone, but I certainly don’t want them collecting:

Web pages visited from your mobile device or your Internet access at home.
This may include search terms that have been used.
Location
App and device feature usage
TV viewing
Calling patterns
Information about your use of Bell products and services (such as device type, postal code, payment patterns, and language preference)
Demographic information such as gender or age range

Which is pretty much everything they can get their hands on.

They say they’re going to use this to:

To create business and marketing reports.
For other companies to create business and marketing reports.
To make ads you see more relevant.
To make ads you see more relevant.

I don’t recall asking my cell phone provider to do any of these things 😉

But more importantly, they offer an opt out for only the last item in the list of things they want to do.

To be fair, the text is a little bit foggy on the whole thing, statements like the following from the support site:

If you do not want us to use your information for any of the purposes described above, you can opt out.

Seem to say the data won’t be used for any of the aggregate usage as well as the targeted advertising. However it still doesn’t say if they will collect it or just not use it. There is a difference, as we’ve seen with the mass surveillance scandal in the US, the government may ask for data Bell collects without a warrant (or a secret warrant) and expect to get it, where as if Bell doesn’t collect the information there is no way they can hand it over to the government.

I called Bell’s customer support line and while they tried to be helpful, the first attempt didn’t really get me anywhere as the support rep didn’t have any idea of what I was talking about. My second attempt had a bit more success and the supervisor assured me that opting out meant they would not use my data in any way other than for billing purposes. However he couldn’t say if they still collected the data or not. He did provide the address of the Customer Relations department, and I mean address, not e-mail or web site, and suggested I write them to get clarification on the question.

The letter will be in the mail shortly 🙂

If Bell doesn’t clarity what the opt out option really means, I’ll have to make a hard choice of either accepting the change or leaving Bell for my cell phone and TV. My service provider should be providing me the services I pay for, not try to co-opt my personal information for their own monetary gain.

Windows 8.1

October 21, 2013October 20, 2013 Greg Leave a comment

[sc:windows-category ]Windows 8.1 was released in to the wild last week and so I updated a couple of systems to take a look.

I have a mix of machines around, my desktop, my Acer W3 and my ASUS ZenBook. As well several virtual machines. The physical PC’s are running Windows 8 Pro, where as the VM’s are running Windows 8 Enterprise and that is a critical difference in the upgrade process.

Windows Pro works just like Home, you open the Windows Store app and simply click on the upgrade that appears. Enterprise doesn’t work that way though. The Window Store doesn’t support the upgrade from 8.0 to 8.1 for Enterprise. Instead you have to download the ISO and run the setup from there.

In a way this is good, as otherwise, through the Windows Store, you have to download the update once for each computer your upgrading. Where as with the ISO you only have to download it once.

Installation

Either way the process is pretty straight forward, wait for a while as the upgrade is installed, which is effectively a new install of Windows. Your settings and files are retained during the process. Once complete, you get to go through the Settings Wizard:

In previous versions, there really hasn’t been much of interest in the customization of these settings, but that’s not true any more… Bing search suggestions, page predication, sending the browsing history to Microsoft, advertising ID… let’s take a closer look at what we can customize:

Ok, the first page looks pretty standard, I turn SmartScreen off, but that’s just me.

Ok, this is a little more interesting… Like SmartScreen, I turn error reporting off and leave the sending of information to MS off as well. The defaults in the lower half are just fine.

Now we’re cooking with gas, as they say (they still say that right? 😉 )…

Search suggestions and page prediction get turned off, MS has no need to see my search history.

Apps using my domain info is ok, there’s nothing there that is a problem.

Advertising ID looks just to be another way to track me for advertising so it gets turned off.

And finally I don’t want to be sending my private files to Microsoft.

The defaults here are pretty horrendous, I would suggest everyone takes a few seconds and review them when installing 8.1.

Applications and Other changes

Once your configured your settings, Windows will then install (or re-install as the case may be) any applications you had from the Windows Store with updated versions and make some final configuration changes.

Once in, you are back to where you started, but now with Windows 8.1.

Once it’s up and you get to the desktop you get the most talked about feature right there in the bottom left corner, the “Start” button. I really didn’t miss it, but on a touch device like the W3 it is nice to have a graphical button to click on.

There are several new settings available in the TaskBar properties dialog box:

TaskBar Settings

One item to note on this is that right clicking on the start button doesn’t have a “Properties” setting, but right clicking anywhere else on the taskbar does. Not a big deal but a little oversight on MS’s part.

The big items here are in the “Start screen” area, with the boot to desktop option and some of the multi monitor options as well.

On this VM the “Show my desktop background on Start” is grayed out as I don’t have a background image but instead just a black fill colour.

The next app I wanted to try was the update Mail client, the first thing you notice when loading it is the new “Power Bar” at the left instead of the folder list.

The power bar is a nice addition, the folder list was unwieldy if you have more than a half dozen folders. But there is something else different on this screen as well, those three little dots at the bottom right… they look a lot like the pop up menus in Windows Phone.

And that’s exactly what they are. I do have a problem here though, notice how none of the icons have text bellow them? You kind of have to guess at them the first time and hope you guessed right.

Mail is otherwise updated with lots of other nice little touches and in general is a big improvement. It feels a hair slower than the 8.0 version when you switch between several messages in a row, but not a show stopper by any means and I image we’ll see performance improvements over the next couple of months from Microsoft as well.

The only other issue I have with the updated mail is that on my tablet, if I rotate to a portrait orientation to read a message, and then delete the message, it returns to the folder list instead of going to the next/previous message in the folder like it use to in 8.0.

Ok, here something I’m kind of surprised about, it’s not big, but Microsoft is usually pretty consistent on this kind of thing:

Notice anything in the Calendar app? Humm those three little dots seem to be at the top instead of the bottom. Just kind of weird more than anything. Also the Calendar icons have text below them.

Some Acer W3 Thoughts

I updated my W3 tablet and 8.1 doesn’t quite run a smoothly as 8.0 does on it. Waking up the tablet sometimes takes several seconds before the unlock screen appears and the video driver seems to have a few more issues that it did in 8.0. Now the W3’s video driver did have some issues in 8.0 as well and with the announcement of the W4, I suspect the W3 isn’t going to get much love from Acer.

Summary

There are a thousand other little tweaks, like in the Modern version of IE when you swipe the tab list, it’s on the bottom instead of the top now, making it easier to select tabs when you’re holding a tablet.

It’s going to take a while to see all the changes, but overall my first impression is that it’s a good improvement.

Well that was a busy few week for Windows Phone…

October 14, 2013October 14, 2013 Greg Leave a comment

[sc:mobile-category ]Ok, Microsoft seems to have been very busy over the last few weeks, let’s do a bit of recapping!

Nokia

First up was the Nokia acquisition. I have to admit I didn’t think Microsoft would do this as it does kind of put them in competition with their partners like HTC and Samsung. However with the big re-org at Microsoft being around devices and services, I guess it kind of makes sense.

I think this will be a good thing in some ways and a bad one in others:

Good: Microsoft will want to focus on the US market, which Nokia didn’t have to do as it wasn’t a US company.
Good: Microsoft’s design department really showed off what it can do with the Surface, I look forward to that group designing a phone.
Good: Microsoft is going to want to have a true high-end phone will all the bells and whistles, including an SD slot!
Bad: With HTC in trouble and now effectively competing against their OS provider, it seems less likely HTC will make a big push in to Windows Phone again like they did at the launch of WP8.
Bad: Microsoft may decided to bring WP all in-house. That seems unlikely, but a possibility none the less.

Something that might come from this might be that MS decides to give WP away to its partners at no cost. When MS had to make money from the software alone they had to charge for it. Now if they can make money by selling phones themselves it may be a way to push adoption while still making money from the OS.

HTC

The rumor is running around that MS has asked HTC to install WP on their android hardware. That seems a little weird until you match it with the rumor that WP 8.1 will drop the hardware back button. If WP needed only one button to function, it would be simple enough to drop WP on any Android device out there assuming hardware support was in place.

That would be kind of cool, I’d love to see Windows Phone on an HTC One…

GDR3

GDR3 has been rumored for a while, but out of no where it was released today! And it finally brought some much requested features too. Custom ringtones for alerts should have been in WP7, but it’s there now. If only it supported time of day profiles as well 🙁

Driving mode is kind of cool as well, I do have a car mount for my 8X so I will probably use this feature quite a bit.

There’s a lot of stuff in the background of this update for new hardware, which we’ll probably see on the 22nd at Nokia’s big reveal.

At last… Developers Preview!

Back when WP8 was released, MS said there would be early access to updates for those who wanted them before their carrier decided to push them out. Today we finally have it… kind of.

If you are a developer (which I am) then you can download GDR today. The process is easy enough, you have to unlock your phone, download an app from the store and then check for an update. 20 minutes later, you have GDR3.

It’s not quite what MS promised at launch (that was that “enthusiasts” would have access to early updates) but it is a step closer and with the developers access now just $19 a year, it’s reasonable.

Last Thoughts

If that’s just the last few weeks, I can only imagine what the next few months will bring. With the Nokia announcement on the 22nd, the Nokia deal closing and WP 8.1 on the horizon it should be an exciting time 🙂

Acer Iconia W3

October 7, 2013September 20, 2013 Greg

[sc:hardware-category ]My ASUS VivoTab Smart has been my workhorse tablet at home since I picked it up, but the other day I came home and found a giant crack across the screen.

Now the ASUS was clearly a low-end unit and there was quite a bit of flex in the chassis so I wasn’t really all that surprised by the crack but it did leave me a dilemma. What was I going to get to replace it?

My first thought went straight to the Acer Iconia W3. The 10.1 inch display on the ASUS was just too big for my normal usage of a tablet and the W3’s 8.1 inch display interested me quite a bit.

I picked up a good deal on a base unit ($299) with 32g of storage and the first thing I noticed about the unit was how much more of a premium build it was over the ASUS. The W3 feels “dense” and solidly built. It is a little heavy for a small device but not unwieldy by any means. The unit comes with Windows Home and Office Home so it has pretty much everything a normal user might need right out of the box.

I have to say the screen size is just about perfect. Small enough to be easy to carry around but still usable for browsing and running apps. Overall I think the 8 inch size might be perfect. I would like to see a 9 inch tablet though, just to compare it with.

Battery life seems to be significantly above the 8 hours quoted which is nice.

One really nice feature is the physical Windows key on the unit. The ASUS had a capacitive button that wasn’t very good, it was often hard to tell if you had hit it. The physical button on the Acer removes any doubt.

The only downside to the Acer is the display, 1280×800 is ok but not great, but it just doesn’t look very good. On some solid fill colors there is also a slight, but noticeable, flicker to the display. I had read a few reviews of the unit which mentioned the display problems so I wasn’t surprised, but Acer usually does a better job than this and in comparison to the rest of the unit it just seems out of place.

So far it’s a great piece of hardware and I look forward to seeing Windows 8.1 on it. It will be interesting to see the next generation of 8″ devices to see how much smaller and lighter they can go.

Nokia Lumia 925

September 30, 2013September 20, 2013 Greg

[sc:mobile-category ]In my previous post about adding inductive wireless charging to a Nokia Lumia 925 I closed with half-joking reference to finding a 32 gig 925, well it turns out half-joking was actually not joking at all 😉

I started poking around on ebay.co.uk for an unlocked 925 and the 16 gig models are pretty common, the 32 gig special edition was a little less so. Also, most sellers didn’t include international shipping in their listings. However a quick e-mail to the sellers proved to be fruitful as not a single one had a problem shipping to Canada.

It took a couple of tries to win an auction and with the 5 hour time difference it did make for a late night as the auction ended at 2:20am. However I did get the winning bid at 321 pounds or about $500 Canadian.

I received the phone, which came in its original box a few days later and it booted up without any issues.

I’ve had the chance to play a bit with the 920 and while a great phone it is a tank. The 925 is exactly the opposite. Thin, light and nicely rounded curves it is the phone Nokia should have produced long ago for its flagship line.

Next I verified the 32 gig of memory and popped in my Bell SIM to verify it was unlocked without any issues. I’m not sure about the power button on the side of the phone or the USB port on the top, but neither seems to be a show stopper for me so far.

On first boot, the phone went through the standard Windows Phone setup process and to begin with I didn’t link it to my primary Microsoft account. Instead I didn’t add an account at all and just played around with the basic phone for a while first.

After spending some quality time fondling the hardware it was time to get to setting the phone up. Connecting to my Microsoft account pulled down my profile info, pictures from SkyDrive and the backup of all my text messages. Installing applications was a little time-consuming and you lose any configuration you had in them but the install application list on the Microsoft Phone website was easy enough to navigate and find out what I needed to install.

One nit pick about installing apps you have purchased is that when you select them in the store you have to hit the “buy” button and then select re-install. Not a big deal but it would be nice if the buy button switch to a re-install button.

Moving my pictures and music across (that were not on SkyDrive of course) was just as simple as connecting my old phone to my PC, copy and pasting them to a temporary location and connecting the new phone. The exception of this was playlists. As they are not “normal” files, they don’t copy across this easily and I ended up re-syncing them from Windows Media Player instead.

The camera is as good as everyone says, the image quality is great and the low light performance is exceptional as well. The camera on my last few HTC phones had been a bit let down to the rest of the phone but Nokia have spent the time to get it right.

I’ve said before my old HTC HD7 had a great form factor and so far the 925 seems to have the same kind of feel to it. I think that it’s the 15:9 screen format that seems to make it feel right. The 925 is a bit shorter and wider than the 8X (but pretty much the same weight) and just feels better in your hand.

I haven’t yet switch my SIM card over to the 925 permanently, there are a few things left to do:

I’ve ordered a charging shell for it so I can try integrating the wireless charging in to the phone.
I use a ProClip dash mount for GPS and streaming media to my car radio, I’ll haven’t ordered one yet as I’m not sure if I want to get a case for the 925. I could also go to the Nokia Car Mount…
See above, thinking about a case for the 925 😉
See above and above 😉 Otter hasn’t created a case for the 925 yet 🙁

Once I’ve gotten the wireless charging integrated in to the phone I’ll move my SIM over and then I’ll have to decide what to do about my car mount…