Comic Neue The new, suited, Comic Sans

Craig Rozynski is an Australian digital designer in Japan. He is the creator of the new Comic font. It is the refined and improved version of the old Comic Sans. Comic Sans was something I liked to use when I was 10 and liked to play with the computer. It is a font, though that to this day I have almost never seen used anywhere for serious purposes. Sure there are places such as the local kids shop or a pizza place that have. The purpose was to show their carefree nature(CERN and the Vatican are said to have used it too :/ ). This version though seems a perfect combination of cool and serious.

Here is quoted what Rozynski aims with this new font:

"Comic Sans wasn’t designed to be the world’s most ubiquitous casual typeface1. Comic Neue aspires to be the casual script choice for everyone including the typographically savvy.

The squashed, wonky, and weird glyphs of Comic Sans have been beaten into shape while maintaining the honesty that made Comic Sans so popular.

It's perfect as a display face, for marking up comments, and writing passive aggressive office memos."

Here you can see some changes from the original versions:

                                                     

This new experiment shows our love for slim fonts, Helvetica being the best example in this case. But loosing a few kilos on a font make it that much better?

The font is available for download for free for a limited time. If you are interested click here and get it. I did. What harm can it do?

Emails from Apple top executives Reveal concerns over Samsung's success and more

Apple is facing Samsung in federal court over patent disputes. For the purposes of the trial several emails from its officials have been made public by Apple. These emails show their concerns about competing head to head with Android smartphones.

An email from Apple's senior vice-president Phil Schiller shows his concern about how consumers perceived the iPhone, compared to Galaxy devices by Samsung.

"I watched the Samsung pre-superbowl ad that launched today… It's pretty good and I can’t help but thinking 'these guys are feeling it (like an athlete that can't miss because they are in a zone), while we struggle to nail a compelling brief on iPhone."

 "Something drastic has to change. Fast!" is another part of the email obtained by CNET. Another thing mentioned in his email are the Apple's views on the market of phablets and low-cost devices(under $300).

Another email is the one of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs sent on October 24, 2010 was posted by The Verge. You can read the full email here.
You can read there about topics such as a "Holy War with Google", "danger of hanging on to old paradigm too long(innovator's dilemma)" and plans for the new iPhone 4S and 5.
Jobs' strategy to "catch up to Android" was focused on notifications, tethering, speech and Siri.
Apple TV is also mentioned in his email and also a strategy to "stay in the living room game and make a great 'must have' accessory for iOS devices", with content from NBC, CBS, Viacom and HBO.

All these emails were revealed on the second day of the trial. Who knows what more will be revealed.

Source: Mashable

elementary OS Isis - Quick Preview

Avi Romanoff, member of the elementary team posted a video of the next iteration of the OS.
Named Isis, it simply looks gorgeous.
It was initially posted in Google+ in elementaryOS' community.
The thing we all want to know though is when will it be available. Romanoff gave this answer:

We plan on releasing a public beta and ISOs in the near future, though we don't have an exact date to share right now. We'll definitely let everyone know when we do -- stay tuned :)

Some of the features shown in the video:

1. The boot speed(approximately 10 seconds)
2. The new lock screen
3. The new Wingpanel, it can change opacity according to the background, pretty cool.
4. Some new animations.
5. New icons, and toggle switches.
6. The new Header Bar

The video is approximately 4 minutes long, check it out down here:

Change log of Android 4.4.3

Even though there is no official statement from Google on what the new iteration of Android will be, the rumors tell us about a possible Android 4.4.3. On this forthcoming iteration, there are no UI changes expected, instead the performance enhancements are the main change.

According to a newly-leaked change log Google has been working hard to improve its software. Having said that there is no way to know if these changes are true. If they are, they should solve a lot of pesky problems(connection dropout makes me crazy). 

Someone may be disappointed since there is no big  UI change, but I think that these fixes are worth doing. Google may be holding out on the UI changes for a future iteration of Android. The current one seems to be working just fine and a lot of work has been put into it. Because of that Google now is able to concentrate on improving the performance of its OS.

The people who own Nexus devices will be the first to get the update as usual, with the Nexus 5 and 7 in the front line. Others will have to wait, and older devices(2 years or more) most probably will never see the update.

The complete change log is as follows:

• frequent data connection dropout fix
• mm-qcamera-daemon crash and optimization fixes
• camera focus in regular and HDR modes fixes
• Power Manager display wakelock fix
• multiple Bluetooth fixes
• fix for a random reboot
• app shortcuts sometimes got removed from launcher after update
• USB debugging security fix
• app shortcuts security fix
• Wi-Fi auto-connect fix
• other camera fixes
• MMS, Email/Exchange, Calendar, People/Dialer/Contacts, DSP, IPv6, VPN fixes
• stuck in activation screen fix
• missed call LED fix
• subtitle fixes
• data usage graph fix
• Internet telephony fix
• FCC compliance fix
• miscellaneous fixes

Source: Android Police

The threat of Malware, visuallised by Kaspersy

Now, whats an antivirus company if there aren't any viruses? Recently the general public interest has shifted from viruses and malware to other things (mobile, wearables,etc). This can't be good for big antivirus companies.

In an attempt to remind us of all the dangerous things that travel through the World Wide Web, Kaspersky has created a real-time-security-threat-map. It shows real time threats happening through the globe. According to Kaspersky the most threatened country is Russia. It makes sense since the data is taken from the companies security network. Being a Russian company the majority of customers are home.

In itself it is a pretty cool map, got to hand it to Kaspersky. The idea behind it though is more commercial, than with the purpose to create awareness. Here you can check it yourself.

Samsung Galaxy 5 gets its first update before its release

As reported for Android News, Samsung its releasing the first OTA update for its new device before even it is officially released. A couple of Korean cell phone carriers have ignored the official date set by Samsung though and are selling it 2 weeks before.

The update is around 150 MB. It is quite a size for a phone that hasn't been tested from the masses. No one knows what it is about, or the changelog.

So if you are getting a new Galaxy S5 in the coming weeks, you will find yourself with a new update just a little bit after you turn your phone on. Be sure to turn the updates on or manually check for them yourself.

All sub 9 inch devices will get Windows for free.

This photo was taken at the annual Build conference. It was there that Microsoft declared its new strategy to break in the mobile market. All devices with a screen smaller than 9" such as smartphones and smaller tablets, will get Windows and Windows Phone for free. It is not the customers that will get their hands on the free OS(maybe at a later time), but the OEMs.

What does this mean for us customers? Supposedly, cheaper devices. But you can never be sure of such things. Unless the OEMs are really open about their pricing methods, we can not know for certain.

Microsoft's previous mobile strategy back in 2010, with Windows Phone 7 was that of small licensing fees. At the time this was a surprise and was a very welcome change. Device-makers would pay Microsoft a few bucks in exchange of having the backing of its massive patent portfolio.

Now four years later, it's clear that that strategy had no effect. Microsoft is in 3rd place when it comes to mobile devices. And it's a long 3rd place. It isn't even considerable when you put it against Google or Apple.

 By setting the limit at sub 9" screens Microsoft wants to protect the revenue stream form laptops and desktops. Even though that market is shrinking, Microsoft's Windows is still the dominant OS. It would be a shame to stop that money from coming, wouldn't it? But in the mobile market, considering its poor performance, this last move can improve things.

Microsoft is having some problems with OEMs too. Samsung is barely interested as it focuses on the Galaxy Brand, synonymous with Android. HTC has difficulties selling its top Android devices lately. Nokia which is the biggest supporter of Windows Phone, is getting bought from Microsoft so this deal does not really affect it. Maybe this new price will interest other smartphone makers, in China perhaps?

'Powered By Android' may be coming

Reportedly Google is trying to unify the diverse Android universe. By unification I don't mean standardization of the UI, but recognition of the OS. Let me explain. For Android fans and tech enthusiasts knowing what Android is and where it runs is a no-brainier. The same can be said about iOS, Windows Phone or any mobile OS out there. The rest of the users though just know the branding of the device. Some may even say Galaxy OS.

Google is trying to get some acknowledgement for its work. Of course different UIs will still be there. TouchWiz or Sense for example aren't going anywhere. Why should they? There are a lot of launchers in the Play Store, these ones just come preinstalled. Even the Google Now launcher which Nexus 5 runs is available in the Store(Link).

What will happen is something like what Intel does in the laptop/desktop market. We are all familiar with the "Intel Inside" stickers in our laptops. There are there just to remind us of the huge work that Intel does. Even though we can't actually see the CPUs or GPUs that this company provides to these laptops, we know that they are there.

Google wants to achieve the same thing. Maybe not through stickers but through a notification in the boot screen.

This is not confirmed though. Also the methods on how this can be imposed to the OEMs is unclear. We haven't seen any of the new devices yet Samsung Galaxy S5, Sony Xperia Z2, etc. Also the reasons behind it are unclear.

Another small company is bought by Apple, Why?

Novauris is a small company most of us have never heard about. Yet this not so known, small company was recently bought by one of the big dogs,  Apple.
Now the natural question is why? What makes it so appealing to Apple, which doesn't normally buy companies for no reason.
Novauris specializes in speech recognition and has ties to the technology and patents underpinning Siri. According to TechCrunch it's experts are already working with Apple to improve it's voice assistant. The are only speculations though. Nothing is certtain. One of Novauris features and strong points has been locally-processed recognition. This would make Siri independent from data connection. It wouldn't rely anymore on distant servers. This is something that to this day no voice has succeeded on.
Again these are just rumors. There are no official statements have been issued from either Apple or Novauris.

Swiftkey Keyboard gets Updated, more personalization options

The number one 3rd party keyboard on Google Play store just got an update. This wonderful keyboard with the best prediction capabilities out there(in my opinion), just got even better.

Thanks to the new update Swiftkey Keyboard now can collect typographical data from Google+ public posts and from Evernote. These are the new additions to the existing lists of apps the keyboard can get data from(E.g. Sms app, Facebook, etc). The new feature is being released to everyone just now, but it has been available to beta users for a while.
Even though this is a good thing to people who do not have problem sharing information, it isn't that good a news for others, more skeptical about what they share. Being myself one of these people, I am just happy that the new personalization features just like the old ones are not forced upon me. They are opt-in and anyone can activate them through the settings menu.
And just like all updates to all apps this one brings numerous bug fixes, mainly forced closes on some devices.

Encrypted messages even in Google servers

As of Thursday March 20th 2014 Gmail will encrypt all messages passing through its servers. This will be done by using always using an HTTPS connection.

Google has offered HTTPS connection to individual accounts since 2008 and made it the default connection in 2010.

Even though the messages going from our personal computers to the Google servers were encrypted, the same messages while moving internally at Google were not. What changed is that now even in the Google Servers the messages will remain encrypted.

This is an important step for user privacy and security. It means now Google itself is less likely to check our messages.

It doesn't mean though, that government backed companies such as the NSA won't be able to request access to certain messages or even track them themselves. All hail to the free web!

Link to the official post in Gmail Blog.

Source: Gmail Blog

Viber expands to the Desktop

Today i was just browsing my Facebook, when I see a notification: "Viber has changed its cover photo". I went ahead and checked it out and I noticed Viber running in a desktop environment. I thought it was a joke since Viber until now has been a mobile only software. But it is true. Viber is now available for the desktop.

This is the Facebook cover that i saw. There you can see Viber installed in a Mac. It is also available for Windows. Actually to get the Mac version you have to dig a little bit deeper in the website.

If you want to check it out just click the link below.

Download

Source:
Facebook
Viber.com

'Wheezy' released, Debian 7.0

The world of Operating Systems is filled with animals. Along with mountain lions, raring ringtails, pangolins, etc, from today there will be also some Wheezies out there. Well a Wheezy is really an animal but a toy penguin from Toy Story. For me it still counts.

7.0 is a stable version. It includes various features such as an improved installer, a complete set of multimedia codecs, multiarch support and several specific tools to deploy private clouds.

"Multiarch support, one of the main release goals for Wheezy, will allow Debian users to install packages from multiple architectures on the same machine. This means that you can now, for the first time, install both 32- and 64-bit software on the same machine and have all the relevant dependencies correctly resolved, automatically"

This is what the official post says. The article there is somewhat more lengthy. A whole list of changes is there. If you want to give it a look and also try this new version of Debian, just click the link below at the sources.

Sources:

Debian.org