insync: it is ok to break up with dropbox

I heard about insync on twitter not too long ago.

It caught my attention the fact they sell themselves as a Dropbox killer, I had to try.

Insync (http://insynchq.com) is, like Dropbox, a little program you can install in a mac or pc even if you are not an admin (which for my work laptop is a must) and that has for objective to sync a local folder among your computers, with a copy online… but with a huge difference from services such as Dropbox or SugarSync, or box.net…

First: it is free. But sure, Dropbox is free for a couple of Gigs too, and SugarSync free for 5Gb…

Second: it uses GDrive or Google Docs as storage and online sharing and versioning… so:

They don’t have to host anything, and you pay Google for storage.

The difference with Dropbox is that for instance a 50Gb with Dropbox costs $9.99 per month, and a 20Gb with Google costs $5…. a year!!! or 80Gb for $20 a year!!

• For $200 per year Dropbox gives you 100Gb
• For $100 per year Google gives you 200Gb

For me this is a no brainier. I was already using Google docs, so I switched to insync.

I can edit documents locally or online, I can set up sharing permissions on google docs… it works like charm.

Congratulation guys!! insync rocks.

Now, how is this Philippines based company going to survive?… we will see… maybe Google buys it…

Posted from .

Watch This Now: Aerial Photography Turned Into 3D Mapping

The latest and greatest revision of Google Maps released at the end of 2010 brought an exclusive feature to the Android platform: 3D map imaging. Solid white 3D representations of buildings pop into focus when you zoom in and rotate the angle of the map with multi-touch, and the feature delivers some awesome depth to Google Maps. It looks even better on a tablet. Why is all this important? Picture those 3D buildings. Now make them a hundred times cooler, and you might be prepared for the 3D maps a Swedish company is creating with flyover aerial photography.

Technology once used in missile guidance systems has been adapted to convert flyover video into 3D city models. The company has already mapped over 100 cities, including New York. We want this in Google Maps yesterday.

(from tested)
 

Rome2Rio, a Vehicle-Agnostic Travel Site, Launches

A new travel site called Rome2Rio launches today, the brainchild of two ex-Microsoftemployees, Michael Cameron and Bernard Tschirren. The site’s main innovation? It’s vehicle agnostic, in a way–you tell it you want to go from A to B, and it’ll tell you what combination of car, plane, train, or ferry you need to take.

In that way, it’s more like the “how to get there” in a Lonely Planet guide, points out VentureBeat in its story on the site today. Rather than piece together information from here and there, Rome2Rio aims for the all-inclusive experience of simply reading a paragraph in a guidebook.

And it goes further than that, too–to be truly useful, any travel site needs to let you book flights. Rome2Rio does that, presenting Kayak airfares, which you can click through to purchase flights.

Cameron and Tschirren told VentureBeat that the site is probably most useful in Europe, where the train systems are complicated and have varied pricing. “Hours of travel time and hundred or even thousands of dollars” could be saved, goes the claim.

The site joins the trend of creating technology that would make classic movie plots based on missed connections and poor communication–such as Planes, Trains, and Automobiles–obsolete.

(from fast company)

Google Debuts New Online Magazine

Postcards from Google Earth

Tablets

Tablets have been there for ages. I remember few years ago laptops with touch screens based on windows. They were sort of a flop. I wanted a tablet laptop back in 2008…

iPhone was the pioneer of a new generation of smart phones… and the iPad set a before and an after on the tablet world.

The iPad was launched a year ago and we are expecting a new version in the coming months. This new version will probably have a front camera, and they expect also a back camera, but who is going to use a 10 inch device to take photos? for me it makes little sense.  Probably it will be lighter (not aluminium, maybe fiber or a strong resine) and will have a better processor (maybe dual core). The screen will be improved but not as good as the retina in the iPhone 4 (it would be too expensive).

Since the iPad was launched we have seen many promises of Android tablets, which never materialized. Only one the Galaxy Tab, with a very interesting form factor (7 inches), two cameras… very nice… but the current android version is not meant for tablets but for phones, so I guess it has not been as popular as expected.

Now we are seing many other tablets coming up: HTC, Blackberry, … some with new OS (fighting against Apple and Google) but most of them adopting the new version of android for tablets (so dual core). Now the fight becomes interesting.

I foresee that android will skyrocket and overpass iPad soon, even iPad 2. Lets remember it is not married to the hardware so everybody can build a platform for an android tablet, therefore bringing a lot more competition.

Also specific in the near future we will start to see devices targeted to specific tasks, like the nook color, based on android but just for reading, or even more into the future  we will seeing the stylus coming back, specially for students, or just to take notes and draw diagrams more precisely than with the fingers.

I did not buy any tablet so far, not even an ebook reader. The iPad lacked the camera and for me it would be mainly a tool to do email, internet, video conference and reading.

Now I am waiting to see what Apple has to show for the iPad 2 and I reckon I will buy it.

I still think I will switch to Android in the future. Android honeycomb is in the right direction…

Google Search Chrome tips

If you have made the switch to Google Chrome, as I did long time ago, then this tips are is going to save you some time:

Did you close by mistake a tab?
Click Command+Shift +T and there you have it again. (Control+Shift+T for Windows)

Going to the search bar?
Click Command+L and the cursor moves to the search bar selecting everything so you can just start typing

Synchronising Extensions, bookmark on all your computers using Chrome?
Go to Preferences, Personal Stuff and log in with your Google apps or Gmail account. You can sync bookmarks, extensions, forms, etc… across all your computers using Chrome. Neat.

You normally search using Google, but if you often search in other search engines, such as wikipedia, amazon, bing, etc… you can create easy shortcuts without having to go to their websites.
If you right click on the search bar, you have the option of edit search engines. There you can say for instance that the shortcut for wikipedia is wiki, so whenever you start a natural search with wiki in the bar it will fix wikipedia and search the next words in wikipedia. See the screenshots:

Call Phones from Gmail

Some of us, when logging into our Gmail or Google apps accounts, can now see a new thing: Free Call to Phones from Gmail. To the US, sure.

If you click on Learn More, then you will see that they have competitive prices to call using VOIP.

I have to say that I have several google apps accounts with different domains, but I can only get this in one of them. I don’t know why.

Chrome tip

Accidentally closed a chome tab? Reopen your last tab with Ctrl+Shift+T (PC/Linux) or Cmd+Shift+T (Mac).

New Google Phone Service Whispers Targeted Ads Directly Into Users’ Ears

From the onion a very funny video

New Google Phone Service Whispers Targeted Ads Directly Into Users’ Ears

Google body browser

Google has recently demoed an interesting WebGL application called Body Browser, which lets you explore the human body just like you can explore the world in Google Earth. Now you can try Google Body Browser before it’s added to Google Labs, assuming that you have a WebGL-enabled browser:

* WebGL is available, but not enabled by default in Chrome 8 (the latest stable version). Type about:flags in the address bar, click “Enable” next to “WebGL” and then click on “Restart now”. Please note that this is an experimental feature in Chrome 8.
* WebGL is enabled by default in Chrome 9 Dev Channel, Chrome Canary Build and Firefox 4 beta.

Damon Hernandez was surprised to notice that the application doesn’t require a plugin. “Unlike other web based medical applications I have seen, no Flash, Java, or other plugins are needed. This application will run on any WebGL supported browser. (…) Last year I got the opportunity to work on an open standards based web3D medical app for learning the bones of the body. After witnessing how that app really helped students learn the bones, I am sold on using web3D for medical education.”

Posted from St Louis, Saint-Louis, Senegal.

Multiple Gmail Accounts Just Got a Lot Easier to Manage

Google’s announced yet another awesome Gmail feature today. Called e-mail delegation, the feature will allow you to easily manage multiple Gmail accounts without signing in and out of Gmail and switching accounts manually.

Originally, e-mail delegation was useful for granting others access to your primary Gmail account — personal assistants, for example.

With today’s changes, this basic feature is going to be more useful for any Gmail user with multiple accounts of his or her own.

When you sign into your primary Gmail account, you can choose to grant access to another account. Just navigate to your Gmail settings by clicking the link in the top right corner of Gmail’s web interface.

Under the Accounts tab, there’s now a new section entitled, “Grant access to your account.” Here, you can add any other Gmail accounts you control to your primary Gmail account.

When you add an account, you’ll have to accept access from a verification e-mail sent to the to-be-added account. Once the account is successfully added, you can simply toggle between your Gmail accounts without logging in and out.

Also, when you send a new e-mail message while signed into a secondary account, your primary address will also appear in the e-mail details.

The Mashable staff will find this particularly useful — will you? Let us know in the comments.

(from mashable)

The Future Is Here: DoubleTwist Brings Wireless Sync To Android For Music, Photos & Video

Earlier today, Winamp released a new version of its Android application that allowed users to sync their music wirelessly with their Windows desktop (disclosure: Winamp and TechCrunch are both owned by AOL). It’s a great feature, but in the race to become the ‘iTunes of Android’, another contender may already be about to lap Winamp.

DoubleTwits offers a desktop media player that looks a lot like iTunes (which is no accident given the ‘iTunes for Android’ theme), and it’s added support for the Android App Store, a music store through Amazon MP3′s API, and a directory of Podcasts. Today it’s launching what’s probably its coolest feature yet: wireless sync, which they’re appropriately dubbing ‘AirSync’. And it’s not just for music — DoubleTwist will let you wirelessly sync your movies, music, and photos.

Given how powerful the feature is, setup is relatively painless. Install the latest DoubleTwist client for your Mac or PC, then download the new version of the Android app. Set your phone to connect to the same Wifi network as your computer, fire up the Android app, and hit the new ‘AirSync’ button. The desktop app will detect your phone, ask you to key in a passcode (this is similar to the Bluetooth pairing process), and from there you can configure the application to sync music, photos and video (photo sync is only available on Windows for now, but is coming soon for the Mac version).

All in all, the process takes around three minutes, though the sync itself will take significantly longer — possibly hours —depending on your Wifi speed. There is one caveat though: DoubleTwist’s Android application has historically been free; that’s still true for the basic functionality, but you’ll have to upgrade to a paid version if you want AirSync — it’s a 99 cent upgrade for the first 10,000 users, and then will jump to $4.99 for everyone else.

The coolest part about AirSync is that after the initial setup, everything should work automatically. Whenever you walk within range of your wireless network, DoubleTwist (the desktop client) will detect any new content on your phone and sync it back to the computer; you can also sync new content from your computer back to your device. This means that you can go out and shoot some videos on your phone, and, provided you don’t walk immediately to your computer after getting home, they should already be waiting for you when you sit down at your desk (Ok, this also assumes you leave your computer on).

It’s quite impressive. Unfortunately there appear to be some issues.

In a word, this is the future. Whether DoubleTwist or Winamp or an official solution from Google becomes the standard, a world without annoying tethering is clearly the way things are headed. DoubleTwist is the first that offers such deep integration, and it’s definitely worth checking out.

Given the timing of the launch (which was originally slated for yesterday but was pushed til today to QA test a new version), I reached out to DoubleTwist to see what they thought of Winamp’s release. Aside from pointing out some feature differences (Winamp doesn’t support Macs and is for music only at this point), they also had this to say — they’re not exactly mincing words:

In general, we do not consider Winamp a competitor as they are geared towards a specific subcategory of users who don’t mind endless menus, preferences and options. We are more focused on the mass market, average user who just wants to make the most out of their device without being overwhelmed by technology.

(from techcrunch)

A bridge to the cloud: Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office now available to early testers

Tens of millions of people have moved to Google Docs because it’s 100% web: it provides real-time collaboration in the browser, with no software to install, manage or upgrade. Of course, we know that many more of you still use Microsoft Office, because until recently, there weren’t many tools to help you collaborate and share with others. Now there’s more

To help smooth the transition from Office to the cloud, my teammates and I founded a company called DocVerse, which was acquired by Google earlier this year. Over the last 9 months, we’ve been hard at work moving the DocVerse product to Google’s infrastructure. We’ve also renamed it Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. Today, we’re pleased to take the next step towards a public launch and make it available to early testers.

For those of you who have not made the full move to Google Docs and are still using Microsoft Office, Google has something great to offer. With Cloud Connect, people can continue to use the familiar Office interface, while reaping many of the benefits of web-based collaboration that Google Docs users already enjoy.

Users of Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 can sync their Office documents to the Google cloud, without ever leaving Office. Once synced, documents are backed-up, given a unique URL, and can be accessed from anywhere (including mobile devices) at any time through Google Docs. And because the files are stored in the cloud, people always have access to the current version.

Once in the Google cloud, documents can be easily shared and even simultaneously edited by multiple people, from right within Office. A full revision history is kept as the files are edited, and users can revert to earlier versions in one click. These are all features that Google Docs users already enjoy today, and now we’re bringing them to Microsoft Office.
All you need is a Google account, and you’re ready to go. That’s it!

If you’re a Google Apps for Business customer interested in joining our preview program, please sign up here. If you’re not, don’t worry- at launch, Google Cloud Connect will be available free to everyone, including consumers.

(from google)

Google Launches Personalized Fashion Shop Boutiques.com

Google launched a personalized online fashion shop Boutiques.com, letting users visually search and discover fashion goods as well as create their own fashion boutique.

Currently limited to the U.S. and women’s fashion only (with plans to expand in the future), Boutiques assists you in refreshing your wardrobe with a combination of curated fashion choices from fashion taste-makers and machine learning algorithms. Start with a style, and you’ll see 50 hand-curated items on top, with the rest of the inventory in that style chosen by Google’s algorithms.

Features include the ability to filter searches by genre, silhouette, pattern, color families and sizes, as well as visual search, which analyzes the photograph of a clothing item for its color, shape, and pattern and then returns visually similar items. Boutiques also gives you matching outfit ideas to the right of the search results, and you can complete looks using style rules, which suggest items that match.

Boutiques is also available as an iPad application, available for free in the iTunes store.