Replace Google Reader with Feedly

I knew Google was going to discontinue Reader, but I thought it wasn't going until July. However, It has gone from the Google home page menu already. Being UK-based I use google.co.uk and Reader used to be on the More menu, but it has been removed. It may or may not be on your own Google home page and it is worth checking.

Google Reader hasn't actually shut down just yet though and a guess at the URL, reader.google.com, took me to my Reader home page. Perhaps the menu option has been deleted to prevent new users from signing up to the service. If you still want to use it you will have to enter the URL or bookmark it rather than go through the Google home page menu.

Apparently 500,000 people have switched to Feedly since Google announced that Reader was to be closed. make that 500,001 because I have switched too.

It can be accessed from the web using a browser (there's a Chrome extension) and there are Android and iOS apps for your tablet and smartphone. A nice feature is that it imports everything from Google Reader, so you can carry on exactly as before on your mobile, tablet or desktop PC.

There is a Reader-like view in Feedly that lists all the news stories in a table, but the default view is more of an online newspaper-style layout that is attractive and easy on the eye. A number of stories are highlighted and there is a headline, photo and extract. Clicking a story rearranges the page contents to open a larger view where there is a bigger picture and more text. There are Google+, Facebook and Twitter sharing options, a link to go to the original website to read the full article, and other useful controls.

Click the icon in the left margin and a menu pops up that enables you to switch between the two views. It also lists your Reader feeds or categories/folders. Select a Reader category and the feeds are displayed.

Feedly is a lot more advanced than Google Reader and it has a lot of features. However, I prefer the simplicity of Reader - it does what I want and no more. Google Mail is the same and while it may loot basic compared to some email alternatives, it's speed and simplicity is preferred by many people.

Reader will be closed sooner or later, so I'd better get used to Feedly. There are, of course, alternatives and they are worth checking out, but for the moment I'm sticking with Feedly.

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Use any printer with an iPad and iPhone

One of the most irritating features of the iPad is limited support for printers. It is fair enough that it only supports wireless printers and I don't expect to be able to plug in a USB cable, but why does it not support more wireless printers? Only a small number of models are supported and although I have a wireless HP printer that works fine with Windows PCs and Apple Macs, it doesn't work with the iPad or iPhone. I have an HP DeskJet 3050A J610 and you need an HP DeskJet 3050A J611 - just one digit different in the model number and it doesn't work.

Even if supporting more printers is not possible, why is it not possible to connect to a PC or Mac to print? If a PC or Mac is on the local network and connected to a printer, why can't it act as a print server? Surely it is possible to send the print job to the computer and then let the computer print it?

That is the idea behind Netputing handyPrint (with a lowercase h for some reason). It enables you to print from an iPad or iPhone to a USB printer that is attached to your Mac. It does this by announcing on the local network that the Mac is an AirPrint printer. It basically pretends the Mac is an iPad compatible printer. All you need to do is to choose the Print option on the iPad or iPhone, tap the option to search for a printer and up comes the one attached to the Mac.

An interesting feature of this application is that it can add a virtual printer. Instead of printing to a real printer it uses the Mac's ability to print to a PDF file. So even if you don't have a USB printer attached to the Mac, it is still possible to print from the iPad and iPhone. The result is a PDF file on the disk drive. You can keep this or when you are next able to print from your Mac you can print the PDF and delete it afterwards. In the screenshot above I have added a virtual printer called MacBook Printer and can print to this from my iPad.

handyPrint is a useful utility to have if you don't have a compatible wireless printer for your iPad or iPhone. It is donationware, which means that after a free trial you have to donate some money to the author. How much you donate is up to you. Just pay as little or as much as you think it is worth.

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Update Dropbox and track downloads

There are lots of online services providing free storage space if you look around, but my favourite is Dropbox. This is mainly because it runs on everything and just works. I'm not bothered about fancy features and just need to get my work done.

Dropbox 2.0 has just been released and you may be wondering what version you currently have and how you upgrade. Find the current version depends on what you are running it on. In Windows for example, just let the mouse hover over the icon in the taskbar. A tooltip box pops up with the version number. On other systems, click the icon and go to preferences. It'll say the version number on one of the tabs.

If you aren't running the latest version you have two options. One is to do nothing. Dropbox automatically updates itself to the latest version. However, this does not happen straight away and users are upgraded over a period of a couple of weeks. You may be the first to be upgraded or you could be the last and it's just luck. The other option is to download the latest version and install it, overwriting the current version with the new one.

Dropbox is useful not only for syncing files between different computers, but also for sharing files. Instead of emailing a large file you can simply send someone a link and they can download it. It is more convenient for both of you. You just right click a file and use the Share Link option on the Dropbox menu. If you send someone a file in this way, how do you know whether the person has downloaded it? If you make a file public by sharing the link, how do you know know many times it has been downloaded?

One option is to use a link shortening service like Bitly. Sign up for a free account at Bitly. Then get the share link for the file from Dropbox and us Bitly to shorten it. Shortening it is not important and what makes this useful is that Bitly tracks the number of clicks on shortened links. So you can see whether someone you emailed a link to has downloaded it, or if you have made a link public, how many times people have clicked it. This isn't perfect, but it can be useful on occasions.

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Samsung Galaxy S4 is an advertiser's dream

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is an advertiser's dream. Why? Because of its eye and head tracking ability.

One of the new features of the Galaxy S4 is its ability to track your head and eyes. It knows when you are looking at the screen and it can tell when you look away. This feature is implemented when watching movies and video clips. If you are watching something and look away, the video pauses and only restarts when you look back at the screen. It is automatic and the eye tracking feature means that you will never miss a second of the video.

Picture this though, a video containing adverts. When the advert comes onto the screen you cannot look away. If you try to avoid the advert the video will pause until you look back at the screen. The eye tracking feature forces you to watch adverts and there is no way of circumventing them! Advertisers must love this feature - a captive audience that is unable to avoid sitting through an advert and watching every single second. Every  frame of the advert must be watched and there is no way to escape the advertiser's message. Try to avoid it and it stops until you come back and give it your undivided attention.

Eye/head tracking is a silly feature that is pointless and most likely irritating. I must admit I have yet to try it, but just thinking about it is enough to see the pitfalls. Sometimes I want to look away to see what's happening  around me, or to focus on something else to avoid straining my eyes - I can't stare at the screen for an hour without looking away. But I don't want the video to stop.

I like to watch music videos and concerts on YouTube. Not just the three minute variety, but sometimes half an hour or maybe more. If you have eye/head tracking then every time you look away the music will stop because the video is paused. This is the opposite of what you want. While watching a concert you want the music to continue even if you look away for a second or two, otherwise it would spoil the entertainment.

It's not just music concerts, but movies, news programmes and other things often have two people talking. You can look away for a moment or two without watching because it's just two talking heads. You haven't missed anything by looking away and you can continue to listen to the conversation without your eyes glued to the screen.

This is a feature I would turn off because the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. It's an optional setting, so it is nothing to be concerned about and on the whole I think the Samsung Galaxy S4 is a brilliant new phone that is better than most rivals.

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Microsoft's miserable Surface sales

I have just been reading an article on the Bloomberg website about Microsoft Surface sales figures. In a nutshell, they are awful. Sales of the cheaper Surface RT are thought to be just over one million and the more expensive Surface Pro, which hasn't been on sale as long, is said to be about 400,000. This compares to around 23 million iPads and probably a few million cheap Android tablets too.

These figures must be very disappointing for Microsoft, but it isn't hard to see why they are so poor. A major problem with the Surface is that it looks expensive. It costs the same as the iPad 4, but offers less. There are fewer apps, fewer pixels on the screen, and poorer battery life. A unique selling point is the combined keyboard/cover, but this raises the price by so much it puts people off. Here in the UK you're looking at £399 for the Surface RT plus £109 for the Type cover making a total of £508. Compare this to the iPad 4 at £399, which is not just a bit cheaper, it's a lot cheaper. And the iPad 2 is £329 and the Mini is £269.

Another big problem with the Surface is that it was initially impossible to find. No stores stocked it in the UK when it was launched. It was available only through Microsoft's website and we had to wait one and a half months before we got our hands on it to try it out. I went to the one store that had it (initially only John Lewis in the UK) and tried it.

There was one Surface demo model among several iPads. Someone had gone to the desktop and opened Office apps - Word and Excel. I wondered how long it had been like this and whether any potential customers trying it knew how to get out of desktop mode and back into the Start screen. It took me several attempts to work it out and I had been using Windows 8 on my desktop PC for over a month. Navigating the Surface isn't quite the same as a Windows 8 PC with a mouse. When I eventually got to the Start screen I tried a few of the bundled apps, but they all failed because there was no internet access. This is a complete disaster as far as trying to persuade potential customers to buy it. There were several people playing with iPads, but no-one tried the Surface while I was there.

The Surface is available at more stores now. Not as many as the iPad, but the situation isn't quite as bad as it was. I went along to a store to try the Surface. However, it was stuck at the log-in screen, asking me for a user name and password. I suppose I could have gone and found a member of staff and asked him to log in so I could try it, but I couldn't be bothered. The demo model did nothing. I'm sure potential customers would just move along to the iPads, which were on display just two feet away.

Contrast these Surface shopping experiences with what you find at the local Apple Store. There is no comparison and there are lots of iPads to try, they all work perfectly and there are lots of staff around to help you try it and demonstrate it.

Microsoft needs to do two things. Firstly it needs to reduce the price. It should be more like £349 for the Surface RT and £399 including the Type cover. Even that isn't really low enough for some people. Secondly, it needs to get the Surface into stores so that people can try it and it needs to make sure they work. Demo models that display error messages when apps are run because there's no internet access and models that are stuck on the log-in screen simply aren't good enough.

The Microsoft Surface isn't bad, but version 1 of anything is rarely the best that is possible. Even the original iPad, although popular, is nowhere near as good as the iPad 4 and I never bought one. I waited until the iPad 2 because this had the features I wanted (a camera, faster processor, etc.). The Microsoft Surface is OK, but it isn't outstanding and version 2 will be better. Let's hope it will be cheaper too.

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This is not news

Don't you get tired of the constant speculation of new products and the constant stream of news story that contain no news? I certainly do and it is very irritating. I have come across a couple of stories in the last day or two that illustrate this and one was a news item that reported that Microsoft is already working on the next version of Windows. There was even a leaked screen shot of Windows 9, which actually showed nothing important.

This is not news. It takes a long time to develop an operating system because of its large size and complexity and as soon as one is out of the door you start work on the next one. It is not news to say that Microsoft is working on Windows 9. Nor does it say anything about the popularity or not of Windows 8. It is just a fact of software development. Apple works on the next version of OS X and Ubuntu developers work on the next Ubuntu release as soon as the current one is done.

Actually, it is best to have multiple teams working on an OS and some people are retained to work on bug fixes, service packs and minor tweaks for the current release, while other people are put to work on the next version. There may even be teams of people dreaming up features for the version after that. I'll bet that there are people at Microsoft planning Windows 10, never mind Windows 9.

Another news story I read, today actually, was that Apple is planning to release a new iPhone this year, probably called the iPhone 5S. This is not a news story. Can you think of a year when Apple didn't release an iPhone? If Apple was not going to release an iPhone this year, then that would be news.

There is also the tiresome speculation of what new features will be in upcoming products. This is mostly about Apple products because the company is so secretive and so little is known. I often wonder whether people just make up these rumours or whether Apple puts them out to muddy the waters and make it difficult to know what the company is really up to. Put out a lot of fake rumours and no-one will know which the right ones are. But perhaps thats just the conspiracy theorist side of me.

The latest rumours are that there will be a new iPad in April. I find it hard to believe that Apple would release three iPads in the space of 12 months. The iPad 3 last spring, iPad 4 in the autumn and iPad 5 this spring? Surely not.

If there is to a refresh, then surely it would be the iPad Mini. The hardware spec of this is barely better than an iPad 2 and it has the same processor, same screen resolution, same memory and so on. Only the camera is better.

I would like an iPad Mini, but the spec of the current model puts me off. I can see this being out of date very quickly and being unable to use new features in upcoming versions of iOS to be released this year and next. The iPad 4's processor is twice as fast and has twice the graphics power as the iPad Mini's and it should last several years whereas the iPad Mini might get left behind. There are already things than my iPad 2 can't do.

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