Tag: google

gadget

Beyond eastereggs, things you probably don’t know

matthias mader

… IT is everywhere, some interesting facts you probably don’t know or haven’t heard even while using IT/it for years, some kind of eastereggs as greatings from the creators behind

1337 – leetspeak for the digital natives

IPoAC

IP over Avian Carriers (IPoAC) is a proposal to carry Internet traffic via birds, an RFC 1149 at Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) from 01.04.1990

ping

the payload of an ICMP/ping request contains “abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwabcdefghi”

cmd

install telnet-client as windows feature, open cmd and enter: telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

wifi

set password to 2444666668888888, when someone ask’s for your password, tell him/her 12345678, but why? … it is calulated via 1*2,3*4,5*6,7*8

word

enter on a word file =rand(5,5) to generate random text

chrome

you know chrome’s offline easteregg and how to play online

you notice it when sites doesn’t load or videos can’t played… not at Firefox or IE google added in 2014 a little endless runner to chrome browser, the developer wrote about the idea – when your trying to load something and the connection suddenly stops – simply tab the screen or hit the spacebar -…

by matthias mader

“J”

on mobile you’ll receive emails containig an “J”, this is because outlook convert smilies in wingdings font, wich mobile display as a single letter J, K und L, instead of :), 😐 and 😦

firefox

enter “about:robots” in addres bar

google search

enter “(sqrt(cos(x))cos(400x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.4)(4-xx)^0.1″ in google search

facebook

the IPv6 address auf facebook is “2a03:2880:f003:c07:face:b00c::2″

bluetooth

the name is a homage to Harald Blauzahn, the logo is a monogram of his wiking runes

apple

amazon

there are lot clever 404 sites out there, but amazon’s favor the love of it’s employee’s dogs

there a lot more easter eggs everywhere! read all 101 best Easter eggs in tech history @stuff.tv

google

switching from honor/huawei to samsung … or the state of android usablitiy

matthias mader

in other words, switch from a non-google android to fully supported android, huawei is the parent company of honor, choose because it’s EMUI respectively MagicUI is quite close at iOS Usability, used a lot in the past years

  • Honor 8 Pro
  • Huawei Mate 10 pro
  • Huawei P30 Pro
  • Huawei Mate 20 Pro
  • Honor P20 Pro

… but not it’s time to turn my back to Huawei/Honor, because:

  • EMUI10 removed “Download” app
  • Battery Optimisation is quite aggressive with required notifications
  • tricky without google play services in the future
  • integration into Windows 10 oder Android Enterprise, leaves space to improve

start the journey a new vendor – several years already owned a Samsung S6 edge (drowned without IP68 protection 😉 – finally choose Samsung S20

this is the second view of Samsungs Flagship smartphone, technical facts could be find else where, just want to focus on the handling

  • download – huawei/honor removed it’s download app, also Samsung don’t offer per default a “download” app, but you could create several shortcuts in “My Files” App right to your homescreen *thumbsup*
  • integration – Samsung expand strategic partnership with Microsoft, buildin “Link to Windows” it just connection to the Windows Your Phone App, available from PlayStore, Samsung Cloud is replaced with Microsoft OneDrive
  • 5G – not required because on it’s way but yet not usable
  • battery – with 4000 mAh, always running low in the early afternoon, “battery optimization” is more strict at Honor/Huawei, but seams to be more effective then generally reduce overall system performance at Samsung
  • max power saving – in worst case there is an option to disable all smart features and leaves just a few app to enhance battery life for basic tasks, camera, telephone – at EMUI it was also possible to select from all installed apps, while Samsung offers just a predefined set (e.g. without brave browser, no telegram but whatsapp!?)
  • multi screen – Samsung offers with it’s build in dex mode an easy way to enhange working from a mobile device attached to a large screen, Honor and Huawei as well, there also other options around

second screen – how to multi screen | updated

let’s check how to use display content at a second screen to raise productivity, there are several options to enlarge your screen, the power of your mobile device is most of the time enough to serve multi screen windows project, duplicate, extend are availabe options when hit windows key + p to open up charms bar…

by matthias mader
  • dual sim – always use two SIM cards for different coutry’s, both offer the ability to configure settings per sim – at Honor it is easier to jump into SIM-settings with a homescreen shortcut, not possible at Samsung – here is it easier to switch between SIM services from notifiation panel, not possible at honor
  • quick search – swipe down to open device wide search for app, contacts or internet content, Honor/Huawei open search and parallel opens keyboard to start typing – same behaviour at iOS devices, the keyboard automatically launch – your guessing it, i’m missing auto-launch of the keyboard at Samsung’s launcher
  • Honor
  • iPhone
  • Samsung

apple’s introduced app libary in iOS14 sort all apps, but search needs to be initiated via an additional click, at Samsung it require’s me to use fastfinder app or another launcher

  • unlock – i tested all unlock options available at the market, the dedicated fingerprint is the most reliable and fast option in 2020, inscreen fingerprint quite slow, faceunlock is useless in while wearing a mask or during night in the dark
  • android enterprise – i’m a fan of the profile separation, what a pity that google wasn’t able to provide the same usablity for all vendors – page vs. folder
  • Honor – separate page
  • Samsong – Work folder
  • send attachments – like the buildin option to reduce file size when sending an attachement via mail at iOS or EMUI, missed at Samsung
  • iOS
  • EMUI

… there are some other pro/con on both sides, this is just a kind of best pratice summary sofar

general

nothing but alternatives

matthias mader

locked to a single provider of your services or your using a service the doesn’t fit perfekt and you look for an alternative, here is the solution

alternative.me provide nothing but alternatives – simply add the current app/service/business application your using and check what possible alternatives are around, e.g. switch from chrome to brave browser

they also check the appeal in categorys women, men, kids, luggage, hobbies & sports

finally they analyze emotions and sentiments with a schema to generate the fear & greed index for crypto currencies

interesting portfolio mix with clever benefits

google

you know chrome’s offline easteregg and how to play online

matthias mader

you notice it when sites doesn’t load or videos can’t played… not at Firefox or IE

google added in 2014 a little endless runner to chrome browser, the developer wrote about the idea – when your trying to load something and the connection suddenly stops – simply tab the screen or hit the spacebar – jump over the cactus/cacti the speed raises with game progress

  • at your desktop just hit chrome://dino to play the game even when your online

let the games begin

technology

switch android phone and (easily) reconnect your wear smartwatch

matthias mader

largely relegated to checking notifications, counting steps, and maybe measuring your heart rate from time to time

in Q3 2019 the wearable band shipments grew 65% and propably below some christmas trees

beginning 2020, one-in-five americans use a smart watch or fitness tracker, according to a Pew Research

apple released in 2019 it’s watch series 5 with built-in compass and Emergency SOS application on cellular models

google smartwatches, running wear os, without an update since rename in 2018 – need oem vender to push the mobile os – xiaomi succeed with low prices to the global leader with 27% share – huawei reached annual growth largest wearable growth of 243% – fitbit recently sold to google

what’s embarrassing with wear os is the switch to a new android device, there is no guide to reconnect, you had to erase the watch and reconfigure – some apps on your mobile device offer the option to install as extention onto the watch, but all other needs to be installed manually one by one

but the is a clever guide to use the developer option to reconnect to a new device, without the need of resetting

simply enable usb debugging, disable blueooth, connect your wearable to android studio/adb tos, execute to following

  • adb devices
  • adb shell “pm clear com.google.android.gms && reboot”
  • adb shell “am start -a android,bluetooth.adapter.action.REQUEST_DISCOVERABLE”

detailed guide at xda-developers

innovation

android drop – upcoming simple filesharing | added fast share

matthias mader

since google dropped it’s “beam” feature in android q – Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo founded an “Peer-to-Peer Transmission Alliance” to ease P2P file exchange between mobile devices

but google was working on it’s own Fast Share, now renamed to Nearby Sharing will be available with future Google Play Service Update, xdadevelopers video below

… and there is even no buildin solution to share notes in android, on the other hand how easy it could be for iOS or even Windows

share everywhere – cloud clipboard and others handle your content

finally announced that their cross-device file transfer solution will launch in february – any file and protocol even folder should supported – interessting solution of chisnese company’s since google is not available in China – we’ll hope other vendor will join the gain this a real universal solution

source: prnewswire

general

mobile os version in 2019

matthias mader

with over 2 billions of android device world wide running android but with a large version fragmentation, google is acting with project treble to push faster updates, for enterprise recommended devices has to push security update within 90 days – attached current version spread of android versions

firstclass support for it’s iOS devices, good choise in regarding return of invest – my 5 years old test device iPhone 6s already updated to the current iOS13

.. and even new releases got a great adoption rate for apple devices, already half of all iOS devices running the latest release

kaiOS quietly gained to one of the most used mobile operating system, it bridges the gap between feature phones and smartphones

general

new forms of malware via calendar invite even more annoying

matthias mader

more often noticed and actually effected by myself – google calenar display per default new invites from inbox, usually displayed in calendar for easy scheduleing or to block the timeslot – so attacker can target your gmail account to push notification directly to your mobile device when the fake calendar entry occurs

to get rid of this spam, it’s not enough to delete each calendar entry, because a new invite immediately popup’s in your calendar – your have to disable the feature “automatically add invitations” in google calendar event settings

further … a vulnerability in WIB sim-browser can let attackers globally take control of hundreds of millions of the victim mobile phones worldwide to make a phone call, send SMS to any phone numbers, send victim’s location, launch WAP browser, etc. – read more

apple, google, innovation, microsoft, technology

windows 10 is (still) mobile

matthias mader

by the end of this year microsoft will end the support for windows 10 mobile on december 10 2019, the october release 1709 was the last update back in 2017

since microsoft wasn’t able to get a markable footprint in mobile business, windows phone failed, relaunched a windows 10 mobile .. there are still ways to combine windows 10 and mobile

launcher 10 – android launcher

i was a huge fan of windows 10 mobile and it’s live tile design, but missing enterprise features und apps forced me to look for other opportunities

launcher 10 offers the beloved windows phone design for android smarthphones as seaperate launcher, sort and resize your tiles including a paid feature of live tiles

live tiles are deprecated of microsoft, and microsoft missed to remove all refences, so it’s possible to do a sub domain tack over, the the service is still online http://www.buildmypinnedsite.com/

your phone app companion

every windows 10 embed a feature to connect your ios or android phone to be able to remote use features like sending messages or access media remotely from your device or synchronize file changes between devices

with is current windows 10 insider preview build 18885 (20H1) microsoft added notification for android devices – stop reaching for your phone to check your with features like

  • see incoming phone notifications in real-time
  • view all of your phone notifications in one place
  • customize which notifications you want to receive
  • clear notifications individually or all at once

read more about productivity with a second screen

3rd party services

other apps like airdroid pushbulltet, mightytext and others offer the also the ability to compose and receive messages from desktop , transfer files without a wired connection and for sure receive push notifications directly from device – additionally
possible within your browser, independent from your platfrom os or even device with when using a webservice

apple

if your using an apple device you’d probably own a mac and should use features like
universal clipboard, make calls with your mac, send and receive messages or handoff immediately between devices where your stopped before, everything connected to icloud

use continuity to connect your mac, iphone, ipad, ipod touch, and apple watch

technology

downgrade beta

matthias mader

…it’s quite easy to join a public beta, a lot of chinese vendor develop there software while customer already using it – for ios and android it is possible to get a sneak look into new features or test changes behaviour in your enterprise environment before public rollout

join beta at

top 3 features of upcoming mobile os

ios 13 “yukon” android q “quinoa/quiche”
split view more granular location control
multi-user ipad undo app removal
dark mode dark mode

but when it comes to downgrade from a current beta, android raise the bar

ios can easiely opt out of beta, but to download grade you finally need to restore your entire device locally with itunes