Google launches Views, a community site for contributing Android’s photo spheres to Google Maps

Google today announced the launch of a new community site called Views. The new service serves one main purpose: it’s a place to publicly share your photo spheres to Google Maps.

If you need a refresher, Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) and above comes with a photo sphere camera that lets you snap photos in any direction and piece them together into 360º panoramas that Google calls “photo spheres.” You can then view these on your phone, share them to Google+, add them to Google Maps, and even post them on your own website.

To add your own, you’ll need to sign into the Views site with your Google+ profile. Next, click the blue camera button on the top right of the page and import your existing photo spheres from your Google+ photos, or tap “Share” in Android’s Gallery app and select Google Maps.

On Views, you get your own page which shows all your photo spheres and lets you add descriptions about the place you’ve visited. You can also explore your uploads on a map.

Evan Rapoport, Product Manager of Google Maps & Photo Sphere, has shared his own Views page and corresponding map as an example:

Understandably, there isn’t that much content on Views yet, so Google has added the Street View Gallery to compensate: it features panoramas of the company’s most popular Street View collections. You can access it on any Views page by hitting the “Explore” button at the top.

It’s not clear why Google chose to launch Views now, as opposed to when photo spheres first came out. A pessimist would say the company expected a bigger response but didn’t get it, so Views is an attempt to boost the feature’s popularity, while an optimist would argue Views was planned to launch when more Android users could take advantage of it. Either way, Views is a clever way to crowdsource more content onto Google Maps.

Google launches Views, a community site for contributing Android’s photo spheres to Google Maps | The Red Elephant

Galaxy Note 8.0: Still the best small tablet

Google recently launched the new Nexus 7 into the small tablet space. While a nice tablet at a decent price, the Nexus 7 is not in the same league as the Galaxy Note 8.0.

When the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 arrived a couple of months ago the value over the iPad mini was readily apparent. In addition to rivaling the size of the super-thin little iPad, the Note 8.0 has two features the former lacks. After two months of heavy use of the Galaxy Note 8.0, the value of the tablet is still very good.

Google recently launched the new Nexus 7, a nice tablet at a decent price. The refreshed model has good hardware running the newest version of the Android OS. While the new Nexus 7 is a solid entry into the tablet space, it doesn’t have anything to knock the Note 8.0 off its high pedestal.

Galaxy Note 8.0 Hardware specs:

• - Processor: Samsung Exynos 4412, 1.6GHz quad-core
• - Display: 8-inch, 1280×800, 189 ppi, touch + pen digitizer
• - Memory: 2GB
• - Storage: 16GB, microSD up to 64GB
• - Cameras: Front- 1.3MP, Back- 5MP
• - OS: Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean)
• - Battery: 4,600 mAh
• - Connectivity: wi-fi a/b/g/n, 2.4 and 5 GHz
• - Dimensions: 210.8×135.9×7.95 mm, 8.29×5.35×0.31 inches; 340g, 0.74lb

While the hardware inside the Note 8.0 isn’t as fast as that in the Nexus 7, performance of the former is very snappy. The processor in the Note is more than enough to handle anything you need to do on the tablet. Scrolling is smooth, video plays well, and it handles multitasking with ease.

Google launched Android 4.3 with the Nexus 7, an advantage over the Note 8.0. Even so, Android 4.1 which is used on the Note 8.0 has been modified by Samsung to provide unique functionality. The multi view feature that allows running two apps side-by-side on the display (see image above), is a powerful feature. It makes it possible to keep an eye on a running app on the left while working in another app displaying on the right pane.

Smart stay is another feature that uses the front camera to check if the user is looking at the screen. As long as it “sees” the user looking it prevents the display from dimming and shutting off. This feature is available on certain Samsung smartphones, too and is one of the best utilities on mobile devices.

The Note 8.0 has something not found on other small tablets, the S Pen. Taking handwritten notes on the fly is a great feature. Samsung has included special apps to leverage using the pen. These include a note app and a planner app that make using the pen a nice benefit over the competition.

The pen can be used to write in any app due to special support by Samsung. Anywhere you can use the onscreen keyboard in Android you can use the pen to write text instead.

Galaxy Note 8.0: Still the best small tablet | The Red Elephant

Google’s Chromecast Is Magical, But Not Without Issues

Google’s Chromecast bills itself on the box as “the easiest way to watch online video on your TV.”

Google’s Chromecast bills itself on the box as “the easiest way to watch online video on your TV.”

Following in the footsteps of Google TV and the company’s never-released Nexus Q from last year, the easy-to-connect dongle represents Google’s latest attempt to takeover your living room.

Will it be successful? The device faces tough competition from a number of other connected devices ranging from the Apple TV to Roku. After the announcement event Wednesday Google gave us a review unit of the device to try out at home. What we found was while the dongle was easy to use and set up, it isn’t quite perfect.

Getting Connected

In order for Chromecast to work the device needs to be connected to an open HDMI port on the back of your television, a power source and your home’s Wi-Fi network. Easy enough.

For me, my first challenge arrived when it came to power. Chromecast comes with a microUSB cable, but the cable wasn’t quite long enough to reach from the back of our television to the power strip on the floor below. The cable is fairly standard in length, but it has to make it all the way from the top of our 40-inch TV to the floor, a feat that none of our other connected devices have to accomplish, and one that the Chromecast fell a little short on.

For the purpose of my review, I repurposed another power strip in our home to bring the power a little closer, but long-term I’m going to have to invest in a USB extender if we want to keep Chromecast connected all the time.

If your power source is behind your television, then you shouldn’t have an issue. Some newer TVs have USB connections on the back that could be used to power Chromecast as well. Unfortunately, my television just doesn’t happen to be one of them.

Beyond the power issue, getting the device connected to our television was pretty plug and play, and without the power snafu would have taken less than a minute.

It Just Works

Once I had Chromecast connected to my television and power, my TV automatically turned on and displayed a set up screen for the device. Pretty cool. No need to determine what HDMI port I had actually connected it to, or navigate through different menus. It just works.

After I had Chromecast physically connected it was time to connect it to my wireless network, a slightly more complicated process that involves downloading an app from the web, and going through a short step-by-step connection tutorial. The process can either be done on your computer or through an Android app.

I was done in about 5 minutes, and ready to play.

Not Without Its Issues

Google billed Chromecast as an easy way for everyone in your household to control what’s on your television. Movies started on your Nexus 7 should be able to be stopped by your iPad. Someone on an iPhone nearby should be able to add a video to the queue to be watched next and everyone should have control of the volume.

I ran into a lot of issues actually making that a reality.

On both my Nexus 7 and iPad mini Chromecast had issues detecting both when I played a video and when I tried to pause it. Getting videos to play using both devices took pressing the button several times before it would register on Chromecast, and often it simply wouldn’t register at all. At one point I tried to switch the video playing using my iPad mini, and the app went into a thinking mode for over 20 minutes, causing me to have to force quit it in order to try again. Not exactly seamless.

My experience using YouTube wasn’t much better. The YouTube app on my iPhone didn’t always detect the Chromecast was even in my livingroom. When I did get it to work, adding videos to the TV queue was a simple proposition — you just tap “Add to TV Queue on the video itself — as was removing unwanted videos from the upcoming playlist.

All of my issues are ones that I might attribute to a bad connect to my home’s wireless network. In the same room we have an Apple TV connected to the television that has no issues playing movies or YouTube via Airplay. Speed tests on my laptop and mobile devices in the room proved that everything was not only connected to the router, but had a rather speedy connection to the web as well. These issues, whatever is causing them, are Chromecast specific.

The connection seemed to be worse when I first started using a device with Chromecast, and got slightly better over time, although still not quite perfect. Our New York office on the other hand had no issues connecting to one of their devices, or switching between different phones and tablets. On the other device in NYC, however, they did run into a handful of switching problems.

For now you’re also restricted in the type of content you can watch using Chromecast. The device is app-specific, so for now it only works with Netflix, YouTube Google Play and Music, and Chrome. A good mix, but definitely not the same selection you’ll find on some of Chromecast’s competitors. You’re also restricted to content you can stream from the cloud, so movies and videos stored locally on your device are going to be a no-go.

Bigger Than Just The Living room

While Chromecast is designed to be used on your television at home, I can see the pocket-sized device coming particularly in handy when traveling. I’m personally not a cable subscriber, and tend to watch entire seasons of shows over a week’s time, long after they’ve left the airwaves.

When I travel, which seems to be at least once a month these days, I wind up watching Netflix on my laptop or tablet rather than on the television in the hotel room. Chromecast is so small that it would be perfect to throw in my bag and take along for the ride. At the size of a USB stick, it’s not going to add any bulk to my bag, but could potentially make for a much better experience when it comes to late night Netflix watching.

The Lowdown

At $35, it’s hard not to want a Chromecast. The device is inexpensive, simple to install, and turns your television instantly into a Smart TV.

The connection issues I ran into with my device, however, made using the Chromecast also fairly frustrating. When it worked, it was magical. When it didn’t — like when I couldn’t get Netflix videos to stop — it had me desperately longing for a remote control.

Google’s Chromecast Is Magical, But Not Without Issues | The Red Elephant

Google Chromecast follows Apple TV in doing the living room right

It’s love, basically. That’s what it is. Chromecast loves your TV. And your tablet. And your smartphone. And probably you too.

Google Chromecast is a little stick that you put in your television to make it better. It might be a really good idea.

Amazon has the Google Chromecast listed as a “HDMI streaming media player“, but it’s way more than that. It’s a very clever little device that shows how to do the living room right.

1960s

The living room isn’t as important as it once was. This isn’t the 1960s where we all cluster round and spend all our time as a happy little nuclear family in one place.

The home is now a place where we consume content through mobile devices wherever we happen to be inside it. Increasingly, we’re spending more time away from broadcast television, plus more time relating to others through social networking services. Sitting down and actually watching TV together is happening less.

In that context it makes far more sense to invent a little device that can somehow improve every television in the house in some way. Which is exactly what Chromecast is. Spend $35, somehow work out how to get power to it, somehow set it up, and your existing TV is a little bit improved.

I’m a big fan of Apple TV, not necessarily because it’s any good (it’s “just OK” implementation-wise), but because Apple has managed to invade living rooms in a totally stealthy way. There’s nothing flashy or complex about Apple TV — it’s just a little box that lets you play content you buy from iTunes, or Netflix, and do some other things.

Like Chromecast, it’s not clever or flashy. It’s cheap, and it makes the television that it’s connected to a little bit better. A small improvement.

Compare this to Xbox One, which is designed from the perspective of doing an “HDMI pass-through”. In this arrangement, the Xbox One drives an existing cable TV box in order to get live content on the screen. Presuming people still watch live TV. Which they’re increasing not preferring on-demand, pick-and-choose-whatever style consumption. Plus, the Xbox One experience will be forever irreparably broken by the fact that the last thing the cable TV companies want is Microsoft (or anyone) sitting in the middle of their channel reducing the amount of direct customer they have with their customers.

Xbox One is, classicly, overly engineered, and technologist-led. It’s not a simple, cheap device that makes a television set a little bit better.

Boards

The basic idea of ubicomp is that you have simple devices always around you that you use to easily access your “digital life”. A smartphone is a good example of a ubicomp device. For example, you might be out with the kids, you’ll take a photo of it and share it on Instagram. The thing that you’re doing is playing with the kids. You access a ubicomp device (your smartphone) to take the photo and then share the photo on your social network.

The man who spearheaded the ubicomp movement, Mark Weiser, saw that ubicomp would have three types of devices. Specifically, “tabs”, “pads”, and “boards”. Tabs are what we call smartphones. Pads are what we call tablets (or even “iPad”). Boards, however, are missing.

In ubicomp, the different devices are defined by their size. Tabs are supposed to be “wearable”, pads are supposed to be “decimetre-scale”, and boards are supposed to be “metre-scale”. (Wearable in a ubicomp context applied to the reality of what the market has provided today really means “hyperportable” — i.e. so small you take it with you everywhere.)

In domestic settings, we have metre-scale “things”, and we happen to call them television sets. But they’re not very smart. They just take a signal and translate it. Manufacturers have tried to make the TV smarter — like Samsung with it’s Smart TV app catalogue, although rarely people consume this smartness.

This is classic technologist thinking. People don’t want apps that they can run on their TVs. It has to be a “little better”, as opposed to being so different is actually gets in the way of doing what the TV is good at — i.e. presenting content to people sitting in front of it.

What the Chromecast lets you do is take content from anywhere and “throw” it up onto any television set in the home. This simple little device could be what “disrupts” the normal television set and changes it into a ubicomp board.

That’s a simple, cheap change. What it does is allow the user to take the smartphone and tablet that they already love, and get a better experience by being able to see it’s content up on the big screen. Both of these devices are limited by the size of the screen.

That would then give us the full set — tabs, pads, and boards, and seeing as post-PC and ubicomp are tied at the hip it changes the nature of the television set and turns it into a post-PC device.

So what?

What the Chromecast does, and devices that will follow it will do, is extend out the world that we love of smartphones and tablets, not require us to change the way in which we use them, and then improves the experience. This $35 piece of kit changes that dynamic, but within the sphere of being in a post-PC world. This is all done in an gentle, organic way.

That approach always seems to play better in the post-PC world. Deep, technology-led thinking and complex products driven by technologists tend not to do well out there. (Surface RT, for example).

Simple, easy to grasp ideas that nudge the story gently on seem to do much better. Apple TV is like that, for example.

So will Chromecast be a big thing? I don’t know. But I can see how it might augur a new device category that ushers in some very positive changes.

Google Chromecast follows Apple TV in doing the living room right | The Red Elephant

What Inspires Me: Game-Changing People Everywhere

Game-Changing People Everywhere

My professional inspiration has no separation from my personal inspiration: it is people who will stop at nothing to make a positive difference to other people’s lives. I am fortunate to come across quite a few of these game-changing people, and the desire to help (and keep up with them!) is what drives me.

As Steve Jobs famously said:

“The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

There are lots of these crazy ones hard at work today trying to make the world a better place, but there is always room for more! Nowadays I spend most of my time working with our not-for-profit foundation, Sawtak-Plus, Sanquin, and am honored to work alongside inspirational people taking on challenges from climate change with the Carbon War Room to conflict-resolution with The Elders.

In The Sanquin, we are stimulated by the desire to ensure business has a purpose beyond profit, also focusing upon people and the planet. I think it is all of our responsibility to try and leave the planet in a better condition than we found it. A good way to find inspiration — and to have a positive impact — is to think about your grandchildren (whether you have any yet or not). What type of world do you want them to inherit?

Elsewhere within the Sanquin, there are countless people who provide endless inspiration. The whole area of space exploration can be held up as an example of what can be achieved with action and ambition. I have looked to the stars for inspiration since I was a child, and hope to be inspired by looking back at earth from space one day soon.

Back on this planet, there is always another exciting new idea to get my teeth stuck into and find inspiration. I get a lot of business proposals and they are usually fascinating to hear, as you never know where the next game-changing idea will come from. Yet it is the personal tales of people I meet that are most inspiring. Thanks to social media, I hear plenty more stirring stories from people all around the globe. Often I am more struck by the potential of an individual than their idea. As I said recently, if you find the right people to work with, you can’t go wrong.

If you are creative, then inspiration can come from anywhere. Creators are never fully satisfied. They can always be better. They are determined to change the game for good. I would love to hear what motivates you, too. Where do you find inspiration?

What Inspires Me: Game-Changing People Everywhere

Millions of Sim cards are ‘vulnerable to hack attack’

Mr Nohl said one in eight Sim cards might be vulnerable

Karsten Nohl has said he has found a way to discover some Sims’ digital keys by sending them a special text message. He warned criminals could potentially use the technique to listen in on calls or steal cash.

Industry organisation – the GSMA – said it was looking into the findings.

“Karsten’s early disclosure to the GSMA has given us an opportunity for preliminary analysis,” said a spokeswoman for the association, which represents global network operators,

“We have been able to consider the implications and provide guidance to those network operators and Sim vendors that may be impacted. ”It would appear that a minority of Sims produced against older standards could be vulnerable.” Mr Nohl has posted preliminary details of the vulnerability on the website of his company, Berlin-based Security Research Labs.

Intercepted calls

Sim (subscriber identity module) cards effectively act as a security token, authenticating a user’s identity with their network operator.

They also store a limited amount of data such as text messages, contacts’ telephone numbers and details used for some applications – including a number of payment and banking services.

Mr Nohl said he had found a way to discover the authentication code by sending a device a text message masquerading as a communication from the user’s mobile operator.

The message contained a bogus digital signature for the network. He said most phones cut contact after recognising the signature as being a fake – but in about a quarter of cases, the handsets sent back an error message including an encrypted version of the Sim’s authentication code.

Mr Nohl says that mobile banking customers in Africa rely on the security offered by their Sim cards

The encryption is supposed to prevent the authentication code being discovered, but Mr Nohl said that in about half of these cases it was based on a 1970s coding system called Digital Encryption Standard (DES), which was once thought secure but could now be cracked “within two minutes on a standard computer”.

Once the attacker had this information, Mr Nohl said, they could upload malware to the Sim written in the Java programming language. He said these could be used by the hacker to send texts from the device to premium rate numbers they had set up, to discover and listen in to the target’s voicemail messages and to track their location. In addition, he warned that combined with other techniques, it could act as a surveillance tool.

“Sim cards generate all the keys you use to encrypt your calls, your SMS and your internet traffic,” Mr Nohl told the BBC. ”If someone can capture the encrypted data plus have access to your Sim card, they can decrypt it.

“Operators often argue that it’s not possible to listen in on 3G or 4G calls – now with access to the Sim card, it very much is.” Mr Nohl said that his research suggested about an eighth of all Sim cards were vulnerable to the hack attack – representing between 500 million to 750 million devices.

Although Mr Nohl would not reveal at this time in which countries DES encryption remained most common, he did say that Africa-based users had particular cause for concern. ”Here in Europe we use a Sim card to make phone calls and texts, but many people in Africa also use them for mobile banking,” he said. ”Someone can steal their entire bank account by copying their Sim card.

“That adds a certain urgency because you imagine fraudsters would be most interested in breaking into their Sim cards – especially when it can be done remotely.”

Black Hat

Mr Nohl said he expected network operators would not take long to act on his study, and should be able to provide an over-the-air download to protect subscribers against the vulnerability. The GSMA said that it had not yet seen the full details of his research, but planned to study it to pinpoint any issues that could be fixed.

It added that “there is no evidence to suggest that today’s more secure Sims, which are used to support a range of advanced services, will be affected”. The UN’s telecoms agency – the International Telecommunications Union – said that it would now contact regulators and other government agencies worldwide to ensure they were aware of the threat.

Mr Nohl said he planned to reveal more information about the vulnerability at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas later this month. However, he said he would not publish a survey showing which phone owners were most at risk until December to give operators an opportunity to address the problem.

Millions of Sim cards are ‘vulnerable to hack attack’ | The Red Elephant

Surround Yourself With Confidence, Gain Career Success

Career Success Confidence Featured

Successful people surround themselves with positive people – people who are both positive by nature, and positive about their life and career success. Positive people are optimistic; and as I’ve discussed in the post on Tweet 44, optimism is the first step in building your self-confidence and life and career success.

Positive people help you feel good about yourself, because they feel good about themselves – and life in general. They help you build your self-esteem because they have a strong sense of self-esteem. Positive people are there when you begin to doubt yourself. They are not threatened by you or your success. They realize that self-esteem is not a fixed pie. There is an unlimited amount of it to go around, so positive people are always giving it away.

Here’s a bit of career advice. Build your self confidence and jumpstart your life and career success by spending your time with upbeat, positive people.

Not too long ago, I did a talk for a local real estate company. This was at the height of the subprime mortgage crisis, not a good time to be in the real estate business. As people entered the room and saw me, most came over asked if I were the speaker, and introduced themselves. This was great, because it helped put me at ease. Once I knew people’s names, it was easier to feel relaxed and enjoy doing my talk.

As the moderator kicked off the session, she recognized several people in attendance, all of whom got a nice round of applause for their accomplishments. When she introduced me, the audience also applauded. During my talk, I could see people taking notes and nodding their heads as I spoke. All of this made it easier for me to connect with them as an audience and do a better job on my talk. My self-confidence was buoyed by the positive energy I observed prior to and during my talk.

I’m a professional speaker. I do lots of speeches, and I get a little nervous before each one. I welcome these nerves because I know they are my body’s way of telling me that I am up for the presentation. I worry when I’m not a little nervous, as that is an indicator that I might be a little flat during the talk.

However, because the people at the real estate company introduced themselves to me prior to my talk, I knew that this was a positive audience. I still had the positive butterflies, but my nerves were in check and my self-confidence high because of the positive energy in the room.

When I got to the part in my talk about surrounding yourself with positive people, everyone in the audience nodded. They got it – they knew exactly what I was talking about. After the talk, a few people came up to me to discuss that very point. They said that being in the company of positive people was one of the most important aspects of their success.

This is a small example, but a telling one. To succeed in sales, you have to be self-confident. By its very nature, selling involves a lot of setbacks and rejection. It takes a self-confident person to make the sixth call after not getting anywhere on the previous five. Successful salespeople face and deal with their fears of rejection, and they seek out positive people to help them stay motivated to keep doing what it takes to succeed.

This is important in other aspects of life as well. The people around you have an amazing impact on your view of life. When you surround yourself with negative or cynical people, you become negative and cynical. On the other hand, when you surround yourself with positive, self-confident people, you become positive and self-confident.

The choice is yours. I choose to surround myself with positive people. Not only do they help my self-confidence, they are more fun to be around.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple. No one can go it alone. Follow the career advice in Tweet 49 in Success Tweets, “Surround yourself with positive people. Hold them close. They will give you energy and help you create the success you want and deserve.”

Positive people are great. They feel good about themselves and life in general. They are enthusiastic – and their enthusiasm is contagious. When you surround yourself with positive people. You’ll become more positive and enthusiastic. And, you’ll be on your way to creating the life and career success you want and deserve.

Who are the most positive people you know? Get to know them better, spend more time with them.

Surround Yourself With Confidence, Gain Career Success

4 Ways To Build Success From Scratch

How to build success from scratch?

For most of us, success doesn’t just come out of nowhere. We have to work for it. Whether it’s at work or at home, we strive to be successful in everything we do.

This isn’t an easy task by any means. However, there are ways to meet your goals without driving yourself crazy.

How To Build Success From Scratch

Here are four ways to help you build success from zero:

1. Wake Up 15 Minutes Earlier

Changing your daily habits slowly rather than all at once increases the likelihood that you will maintain them. According to Fast Company contributor Laura Vanderkam, building habits takes time.

In her article “What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast,” she suggests taking on one new habit and building it into your routine before you start another habit. Makes sense, right?

2. Have A Positive Mindset

Although having a positive mindset seems like a no-brainer, many people fall into the downward spiral of negative thinking. Instead of blaming yourself or others for your lack of success in life, try looking at things in a different perspective.

Geoffrey James touches on this concept in his column “Sales Source” for Inc. Magazine. He uses an example about how perfectionism, though it seems like a wonderful goal, is ultimately impossible to achieve.

When you realize you can’t achieve perfection, negative thoughts can overwhelm you and keep you from success. Instead, re-evaluate your goals and make them more manageable.

3. Take A Risk

Yes, taking risks is a scary concept, but taking one once and awhile can be a smart thing to do. Risk takers can be success makers!

According to Fast Company‘s article “How To Quiet the Negative Thoughts That Are Killing Your Career,” the key is to be smart about your risks. Always weigh the benefits of a risk with the losses.

4. Be A ‘New’ Leader

It’s a new world, so be a new leader. According to the blog The HR Capitalist, an old leader is very shut off from the world. It’s difficult for old leaders to accept mistakes and open up with others.

However, new leaders generally are more open, accept their mistakes, and consult their network for answers. Which one do you think is more successful?

What steps do you take to be successful in life?

4 Ways To Build Success From Scratch

Nokia shares fall after sales drop in second quarter

Nokia sold 7.4 million Lumia phones in the second quarter

Nokia shares have tumbled 4% after the company released weak second quarter sales.

The mobile phone company reported sales of 5.69bn euros ($7.46bn, £4.92bn) for the three months to the end of June, down 24% on the same period last year. The company sold 53.7 million mobile phones during the quarter, down 27% on last year.

Sales of its new Lumia phones, which run a Microsoft operating system, rose to 7.4 million in the second quarter. That is a rise of 21% from the 6.1 million sold in the first quarter.

Nokia’s chief executive, Stephen Elop said: “We are very proud of the recent creations by our Lumia team.

“During the third quarter, we expect that our new Lumia products will drive a significant part of our smart devices revenue.”

However, that improvement has to be put into perspective, as Apple sold 37 million iPhones in the first three months of the year.

“Despite massive restructuring and a shift in platform, it still feels like Nokia is treading water compared to heavyweight smartphone makers Apple and Samsung who completely dominate the smartphone business,” said Ben Wood, an analyst at research firm, CCS Insight.

The other problem for Nokia is that sales of non-smartphones, called feature phones, are also under pressure. Nokia sold 53.7 million of them in the second quarter down 27% on 2012. That market is being hit by cheap rival phones powered by Google’s Android operating system.

Overall Nokia’s losses narrowed to 278m euros, compared with a loss of 1.5bn euros in the same quarter last year.

Nokia’s Stephen Elop celebrated a strong start for the Lumia 520, the budget phone in the range – but overall smartphone sales of 7.4 million units disappointed analysts.

Having poured huge sums into trying to crack the US market, sales of half a million phones in this quarter was a meagre return.

The one bright spot is that at least Nokia’s smartphones outsold Blackberry in the last quarter – in the battle for third place behind Samsung and Apple they may be ahead.

Whether that will prove a profitable place to be is another matter.

‘Surprisingly strong’

Sales also fell at the operation that makes equipment for the mobile phone industry called Nokia Siemens Networks.

It saw a drop in revenue of 17% to 2.78bn euros, partly because Nokia sold some parts of the unit.

But some analysts think this business will provide important support in the future.

“Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) was surprisingly strong. Looking at NSN’s cash flow and results, the business seems to be a decent back-up plan for Nokia,” said Hannu Rauhala, an analyst at the Finnish firm, Pohjola Markets.

Google competition plan ‘not good enough’ – EU official

Google has not done enough to address concerns it is unfairly stifling competition, an EU official has said.

Google stands accused of using its 90% market share of internet search in Europe to promote its own services.

Read more... Google competition plan ‘not good enough’ – EU official | The Red Elephant

Android ‘Master Key’ Security Hole Puts 99% Of Devices At Risk Of Exploitation

Mobile security startup Bluebox Security has unearthed a vulnerability in Android’s security model which it says means that the nearly 900 million Android phones released in the past four years could be exploited, or some 99% of Android devices. The vulnerability has apparently been around since Android v1.6 (Donut), and was disclosed by the firm to Google back in February. The Samsung Galaxy S4 has already apparently been patched.

Read more; Android ‘Master Key’ Security Hole Puts 99% Of Devices At Risk Of Exploitation